


There's Something About MacGyver

by TheGirlWhoRemembers



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, Bozer's Love Life is Complicated, Coffee Shop, Domestic, Domestic MacGyverisms, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Hot Neighbour, Jack Gives Advice, Jack's is Worse, Kinda, Love, Mac and Bozer are Best Friends, Mac and Jack Bromance, Mac's Nerd Side, Mac's isn't Really, Platonic Love, Plus Bozer, Puppy Mac, Rom-Com Tropes, Rom-com, Romance, Romantic love, Second Chances, Sort-of, Supportive Bozer, Team as Family, Tropes, Wise Jack, fatherly jack, for once, macgyverisms, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-24 12:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9725000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGirlWhoRemembers/pseuds/TheGirlWhoRemembers
Summary: Bozer meets his ‘future girlfriend’ in a coffee shop.At the same time, Jack struggles with the fact that Sarah, the one that got away, is getting married, and has no idea that Coffee Shop Girl is his ex-girlfriend Diane’s daughter.Meanwhile, Mac’s projects keep overflowing into his beautiful new neighbour’s yard.Or, the Rom-Com AU that no-one asked for.





	1. Valentine's Day 2017

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Valentine’s Day (the inspiration hit me and would not let go, similar to what happened with the _Paperclip Charms_ Valentine’s Day special) – I have a secret weakness for rom-coms of the _Love, Actually_ style (though I will vehemently deny it). This is the result. 
> 
> The title is from the rom-com _There’s Something About Mary_ and honestly doesn’t have any relevance to the plot (there are no similarities between the rom-com and this story, I think – to be honest, I have only seen ten minutes of it and am going off the Wikipedia plot summary…), but I thought it was amusing. 
> 
> Essentially, this is a fusion of a rom-com and how I wish that some of the romances (*cough* Jack’s love life *cough*) had been treated in the show, with a healthy helping of friendship (in particular Jack/Mac/Bozer bromance) and Team-as-Family (or at least, that was my intention…).

**VALENTINE’S DAY 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

_Today is February 14 th._

_Or, to most people on the planet, Valentine’s Day._

_In 496, this day was declared St. Valentine’s Day by Pope Gelasius I, but it originally has its roots in an ancient Roman fertility celebration, Lupercalia, which was actually celebrated on February **15 th.**_

_Things have changed an awful lot since, and now it’s a day that might be marked more by Hallmark cards and overpriced dinners and overblown marketing campaigns, or some say._

_I’m probably an idealistic romantic, but I still believe that underneath all of that commercialism, there’s still a heart to be found._

_I still believe that the spirit of the day, the love and the romance, is **not** dead._

* * *

Sitting in the backyard, around the fire pit, three men, two young, one not-so-young, stared at the fire, beers in hand.

* * *

_Unfortunately, none of us actually have a date today._

_In fact, none of us have had a date all that recently._

_Yeah, things haven’t been too good on the love front for any of us, to be honest._

_See the brunette in black?_

_That’s Jack Dalton, forty-five, ex-Delta Force, now a mechanic and owner of Dalton Auto Repair in Pasadena._

_We met in Afghanistan, six years ago, now. We’ve been through a lot together, saved each other’s lives more than a few times, and he’s not just a friend, he’s **family**._

_An older brother, or maybe even a father, sometimes._

_The poor guy’s having a **terrible** Valentine’s Day._

_Yesterday, he got a save-the-date card, for a wedding._

_The wedding of a CIA agent he served in a taskforce with when he was in Delta Force._

_Her name’s Sarah._

_Jack calls her the one that got away. The right one, sometimes._

_Talks about her all the time._

* * *

**2001**

**SOMEWHERE IN IRAQ**

* * *

They, like the rest of their taskforce, were pinned behind cover in the abandoned building.

Jack ducked out from behind the crate for a moment, fired off a couple of shots, and then returned to cover and turned to the CIA agent beside him, who had just calmly fired off a couple of shots of her own, taking down two of the guys who were shooting at them.  

‘You know, I’d marry you in a hot minute if you didn’t have a boyfriend!’

Sarah just shook her head at him, a smile on her face despite their situation, and kept shooting. Jack glanced around, and looked briefly out the window next to them. A plan started formulating in his head, and he signalled to Sarah, and then to Davies, the soldier nearest him. Davies nodded, sent some signals back, and then started passing the signal to the rest of the taskforce.

As Sarah covered him, Jack reached out and smashed the window, then returned fire as Sarah, as planned, jumped out of it.

‘Ladies first!’

* * *

**2007**

**DAVIS RESIDENCE**

**LA**

* * *

‘Don’t you dare come near them ever again, you hear me?’

Jack all but tossed the other man, who reeked of alcohol, onto the front porch.

He watched with an almost-vicious satisfaction as the abusive bastard scrabbled to get his balance, a healthy dose of fear in his eyes, and then ran off as best as he could.

Then, he looked back inside, down the hall.

At the slightly-shaking woman standing there, staring at him with wide eyes, almost _horrified_ eyes.

At the dark-haired fifteen-year-old peeking out of her room, that same look in her eyes.

Like mother, like daughter.

(Riley was so much like her mother in so many ways.)

What he’d just done hit him like a ton of bricks.

He glanced back onto the street again, then back down the hall.

He locked eyes with Diane, who was still shaking. Still wide-eyed.

What had he _done_?

He shook his head.

‘God…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I…I…I messed up…’ He swallowed. ‘I…I’ll leave.’

He walked out the door and out of their lives.

‘ _Jack!_ ’

He ignored Diane’s cry, shaken and scared and _heartbroken_ , even if it made his heart wrench.

They were better off without him.

* * *

_And the guy in the cardigan?_

_That’s Wilt Bozer, but everyone calls him Bozer._

_He’s a twenty-seven year old aspiring filmmaker who currently works as a cook in a burger joint. He’s also my roommate and my best friend._

_He’s been my best friend since the fifth grade, when he broke Donnie Sandoz’s nose for me._

_Bozer’s a great guy, the best, but, as he puts it, his romance game’s not quite on point, because he’s also very dateless this Valentine’s Day._

* * *

**2007**

**MISSION CITY**

* * *

‘…I’m sorry, Bozer, you’re amazing and all, but…I really do just see you as a friend.’

Bozer shrugged and smiled at his Prom date and dear friend, Penny Parker, and then reached out and bumped fists with her.

‘Ditto, Penny, definitely ditto.’ He shrugged again. ‘Well, we gave it a go.’

The girl grinned at him and reached out and pulled him into a side-hug.

‘Let’s go grab a few pints of ice-cream and head to Mac’s?’

Bozer returned her grin, and then they both shared a rather sad look, thinking of their friend, at home with his grandfather watching a live shuttle launch on TV on Prom night.

‘Sounds like a plan! What are BFFs for, after all?’

* * *

**2009**

* * *

‘I just need to focus on my studies. I really don’t have time for a relationship right now…’

* * *

**2011**

* * *

‘I’m sorry, Bozer, you’re a great guy, you really are…but I’m just not interested in you that way.’

* * *

**2012**

* * *

‘It’s not you, really, it’s me. I’m…I’m just not in the right headspace right now…’

‘…Thanks, really, for being so understanding. I really appreciate it.’

‘…See you around.’

* * *

**2015**

* * *

‘…I understand. I know this long-distance thing has been really hard.’ The young woman on his computer screen sniffled as he spoke. ‘I...I guess I feel the same way too. I just haven’t been able to say it, I guess…’ She gave a sad little smile at his words (which weren’t _completely_ true, if he was honest), and he continued. ‘Thanks…thanks for being the one brave enough to come out and say it.’

She waved at him, that sad look still on her face.

‘Goodbye, Bozer…I…I wish you all the best…’

He sighed and waved too.

‘Goodbye. I wish you all the best, too.’

* * *

_And the blonde guy?_

_That’s me, Angus MacGyver. **Please** call me Mac. Twenty-five, ex-Army EOD, now employed at JPL here in Pasadena._

_I’ve won twelve science fairs, I met my best friend when he saved me from a bully, I spent Prom night watching a live shuttle launch on TV, I graduated from MIT at eighteen in only two years, I get excited by weird things, and I own a pancake-making toaster, which I made myself._

_And crazy engineer is pretty much my job description._

_Not that surprising that I’m dateless this Valentine’s Day, is it?_

* * *

**FEBRUARY 2008**

**MISSION CITY**

* * *

‘…Wait…am I now you and Bozer’s mutual ex-girlfriend?’

Mac’s rather morose expression (even if he agreed with her that they were better off friends and probably really only loved one another as friends, he _was_ still sad that they didn’t work out) lightened somewhat at Penny’s comment, and he gave a snort of laughter.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 2013**

**MAC AND NIKKI’S RESIDENCE**

* * *

Mac looked around their apartment.

When he and his girlfriend of five years had moved in together, last year when he’d been home from deployment, he’d thought that the distinctions between _his_ stuff and _her_ stuff had disappeared.

But now, everything that had at some point been _Nikki’s_ was gone from their home.

The throw blanket on the couch that she loved to cuddle under in the winter, that painting on the living room wall that she adored but Mac secretly hated, the tea set in an ornate box that her grandmother had given her that normally sat pride of place on a shelf in the kitchen.

Her coats no longer hung on the coat hooks by the door, and every last pair of her shoes were gone from the shoe rack.

There was a suitcase and a duffle bag by the door, just next to where they stood.

Mac turned and looked at his girlfriend (or should it be ex-girlfriend, now?). He saw the sadness in her eyes, but also the resoluteness.

He felt something break inside him. Tears welled up in his eyes.

‘Nikki…greeting me at the airport just then…was it all a lie?’

Nikki sighed and looked down, reaching out and putting her hand on her suitcase’s handle.

‘You were gone, Mac. _All_ the time. You were so far away, and we could barely talk…’ She looked up at him. ‘I was so _lonely_ , Mac…’ She looked down again, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I met someone, earlier this year, at work.’ She looked up at him briefly, then at the wall. ‘We were just friends at first, I swear. I never intended to…’ Mac felt his heart shattering. ‘…but it happened. A couple of months ago.’ She looked up at him, eyes teary and almost regretful. But only almost. ‘I…I tried to tell you, I really _did_ , but…it didn’t feel like something I could tell you over a screen!’ She paused for a moment and bit her lip. ‘What was I supposed to do? Break up with a war hero at the airport the moment he arrives home from Afghanistan because I met another man?’

Mac fought hard to hold back the tears that threatened to fall from his eyes.

‘Nikki…I…I _love_ you.’

She sighed and looked down. For the first time, she didn’t say it back.

‘I’m sorry, Mac.’

And she tossed the duffle bag over her shoulder, grabbed the suitcase, and walked out of the door and out of his life.

He stared at her as she left, struck still and dumb, and then stumbled his way over to the couch, collapsed on it, and sobbed.

Yes, long-distance was difficult. His job made things difficult.

But she’d said she _understood_. He’d asked, talked to her about this, and she’d said she understood. Understood that sense of duty, that sense of responsibility, that drove him and kept him away from her. Understood that he did, always, want to come home to her, but that he also felt that he had a job to do.

The Ghost was still out there, after all. The man who’d killed his mentor and so many others. And there were so many others like him out there, too, who had to be stopped and brought to justice and whose potential victims had to be saved.

And he’d tried, tried so hard. He’d sent her emails whenever he could, and real paper letters, too. Did everything he could to show her that she was often in his thoughts, even if he was far away and facing death and danger and darkness on a daily basis. (Maybe especially because he was.)

With yet another heart-wrenching sob, Mac reached out and knocked over the bowl of paperclip charms, talismans, symbols, on the coffee table, the bowl of little things that he’d made for her from the paperclips that he carried everywhere with him, and sent back to her from Afghanistan.

Tokens of affection.

Symbols of his love for her.

He sobbed again, and picked up one of the bent paperclips, reshaping it into a heart, cut in two with jagged edges.

* * *

**FEBRUARY 2014**

**OUTSIDE NATO HOSPITAL**

**GERMANY**

* * *

The beautiful young nurse with blonde curls (whom he’d made a Taser for out of his electric razor so that she could protect herself from her abusive ex) smiled at him.

‘If you are ever in Germany again, look me up.’

Mac’s ears reddened, and he fiddled with the cloth of the sling that his left arm was in.

‘I…I am terrible at plans, but let’s plan to make plans?’

Katarina’s smile widened, and she waved and walked away.

‘Goodbye, Angus MacGyver.’

Jack, also currently stuck in a wheelchair (they had both been badly injured in the line of duty and although they were expected to make more-or-less full recoveries, as Jack would likely always have a dodgy left knee and right wrist, and there were a few concerns about the mobility of Mac’s left arm, given the bullet and the shrapnel he’d taken to the chest, their military careers were now over and they were both getting honourable discharges on medical grounds), smirked at the young man whom he called his brother, as they waited to be picked up to be transported back to the US.

‘She likes you, brother.’ He turned more serious for a moment. ‘You could go and try and get her email or something? Try out long-distance?’ Mac was already shaking his head as Jack spoke. ‘Brother, is this to do-‘

‘I’m _not_ still in love with Nikki, Jack.’

* * *

**JULY 2016**

**MAC’S FAVOURITE DINER**

**PASADENA**

* * *

‘This isn’t working out, Mac.’

Mac, who’d been lost in his thoughts, trying to pin down why this just didn’t feel _right_ (they’d had two very good dates, but tonight, their third date, had just felt _off_ ), smiled sheepishly at Cindy, biting his lip.

‘It isn’t, is it?’

She nodded, then shrugged.

‘Ah well, we tried. It’s a shame though, you’re really good at escape rooms.’

He gave a half-laugh.

‘Sorry for ruining your perfect record for nothing.’

She smiled at him.

‘It wasn’t for nothing; I had fun.’

He nodded in agreement.

‘So did I.’

They sat there in awkward silence for a moment, before Cindy got up.

‘I’ll see you around, Mac.’

He waved and smiled at her, hoping that it didn’t look as awkward as he felt.

‘See you, Cindy.’

She walked out of the diner, leaving him there to finish his pie.

Dating was complicated, and weird.

* * *

**VALENTINE’S DAY 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Jack, staring at the fire, sighed and chugged down the rest of his beer. He reached for another one, leaning towards Mac’s self-opening Esky, which popped open as his hand neared it.

Mac reached out and put an arm around his shoulders, while Bozer held out the bowl of chips to the older man.

‘I’m sorry, Jack.’

‘Me too, man.’

Jack gave another sigh. Sarah’s save-the-date card arriving had really thrown him for a loop.

‘Thanks, Mac, thanks, Bozer.’ He looked into the fire for a moment. ‘But the ship sailed a long time ago. I missed my chance years ago. Thought I was over her, honestly. As over her as I’m ever going to get, anyway, one that got away and all.’ He snorted. ‘Apparently, I was very wrong.’ He sighed. ‘Still, a few minutes with the right one is better than a lifetime with the wrong one.’ He glanced at both the younger men, eyes firm. ‘Now, promise me, both of you, that when you meet the right one, you don’t let her go without a fight, okay? Tell her how you feel, and don’t wait around thinking she’ll be there forever, because one day, she’ll be gone.’

Both younger men nodded solemnly.

‘I promise, Jack.’

‘Promise, man.’

They all clinked their beers together in a toast, and sat there in comfortable, companionable silence for a while.

Eventually, Mac broke it.

‘We each have only one stable and functional relationship with a woman.’

Jack and Bozer both gave snorts of laughter.

‘Our mutual ex-girlfriend is seriously awesome, bro.’

‘I don’t know if you can call my relationship with Patty stable or functional, brother. I mean, she hasn’t killed me yet, but…I’m still not sure if she actually has a sense of humour…’

Patty was Patricia Thornton, a District Attorney who trained at the same gym as Jack. They were training buddies and friends of a sort, despite being rather mismatched in almost all ways. Jack was big and bulky, not delicate-looking at all, and also rather goofy, while Patricia was slim, deceptively fragile-looking and serious.

Jack continued.

‘Also, you’re forgetting Matty.’ He shuddered. ‘You _can’t_ forget Matty. She’ll _know_ , and she’ll have her revenge on me.’

Bozer and Mac just exchanged a look, and then chuckled. Jack shook his head at the two younger men.

‘You don’t know her like I do, kids, you really don’t. The Hun is _terrifying._ ’

_While we all do have a stable and functional, well, relatively-speaking, relationship with Matty the Hun, I’m really not sure if she counts._

_She’s a **cat.**_

**_Jack’s_ ** _cat, actually. Whom he claims hates him._

_Yes, Jack is **terrified** of his own cat. _

_I guess she does have very sharp claws._

_She didn’t like me at first. I won her over when I ‘proved myself’ to her by making her a very fancy custom cat-tree. Now we get along just fine._

_Jack claims that Matty **still** hates him, which I think is ridiculous._

_She is **his** cat, after all._

_Funnily enough, she’s always liked Bozer._

_Though, I guess everyone likes Bozer._

An alarm clock rang suddenly, and they all looked over to the grill, which Mac had long ago modified so that Bozer’s incredible pastrami would cook in only half an hour.

Bozer got up and opened the grill, and transferred the pastrami inside onto a plate. (It looked perfectly cooked, and there hadn’t been a fire this time, which was excellent.)

‘Time to eat!’

All three friends exchanged a grin, and as he and Jack walked over to the little dining table on their deck, where Bozer was carving up the pastrami, Mac smiled at his two closest friends, reaching out to grasp each of their shoulders.

‘We might have far less than stellar love lives, but we’ve got each other, so I guess we’re not lacking in love, at least.’

Jack and Bozer smiled at him, and Jack raised his beer in a toast.

Bozer handed him a plate of food.

‘Amen to that, brother.’

‘Love you too, bro.’

* * *

_Of course I’d like a girlfriend, and a wife and kids someday._

_I want that whole white-picket-fence happy ending._

_I know Jack and Bozer do too._

_But I’m happy with what I’ve got right now: great friends._

**_Family_ ** _, really._

_I’m really **not** lacking in love, even if I haven’t got a valentine this year._

_Besides, there’s always next year, right?_

 


	2. February 15th 2017

**FEBRUARY 15 th 2017**

**JACK’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

‘Should I go, Matty?’

Jack, eating his breakfast at the kitchen counter, addressed his tabby cat, who just meowed and licked one of her paws quite imperiously.

‘I mean, she’s inviting me, right? Would be kind of rude not to go.’

Matty shot him a look, and just kept licking her paw.

‘If she gives me a plus-one, I guess I’ll take Mac, we’ll head down to San Fran together, make a trip of it.’

Matty hopped onto the nearest part of her cat-tree (which took up half of Jack’s living room, not that he really minded, in all honesty) and meowed at that statement. She’d been very fond of Mac ever since he’d made her that cat-tree. She seemed to think that he’d proven himself to her.

‘Guess the question isn’t really if I should go, honestly…more what should I say to her.’ Jack sighed. ‘Do I tell her, do that whole speak now thing? Or do I just go and wish her and this Jeff guy well, forever hold my peace, that sort of thing?’

Matty just looked at him and they stared at one another for a long time.

Jack blinked first.

Matty gave a meow of victory and jumped onto his shoulder, digging her claws into him. He felt them through his shirt and swore.

She jumped off him, yowling, and he shook his fist at her (in an affectionate manner).

‘Oh, come on! You like Bozer, you like Mac, and you don’t even like _me_? _I’m_ the one who feeds you!’

He shook his head (it probably served him right, asking his cat for advice), and packed up his cereal bowl.

Maybe he’d ask Patty after work. She was usually at the gym on Wednesdays.

* * *

**JACK AND PATRICIA’S GYM**

**LA**

* * *

Patricia Thornton pulled off her boxing gloves and unwrapped her hands, leaning against the wall next to the sparring mat and looking at her sparring partner, an eyebrow raised.

Eventually, Jack sighed. (She _was_ good. No wonder she was such a formidable force in the courtroom.) He started unwrapping the strapping around his right wrist, ignoring the twinge of pain in his left knee. He’d probably gone too hard today, but he found he didn’t really care.

‘I got a save-the-date-card in the mail. For a wedding. Her name’s Sarah, I met her during my Delta Force days, and…she’s the one who got away.’

Patricia just nodded as he started unwrapping his hands, playing with the wrappings as he did so.

‘Either you go tell her how you feel _now_ , or you hold your peace forever, Jack. _Do not_ wait until the day. Weddings are expensive and a pain to organize, and even harder to cancel; don’t make her call it off at the last minute.’

Jack sighed and nodded. He knew as much. Honestly, as he’d told Mac and Bozer, he knew that he’d missed his chance years and years ago. Sarah had clearly moved on (and honestly, he had too, even if her imminent wedding was bringing out all of his old feelings for her again – it wasn’t as if Diane didn’t pop up in his thoughts more often than he’d like too); to do anything but show up to her wedding as a supportive friend and wish her and Jeff well would be wrong.

Unless, of course, he showed up and found that she _wasn’t_ happy with Jeff, that she really wanted him to…

Jack shook his head, trying to clear his mind of that thought.

That was ridiculous.

That sort of thing only happened in movies.

No, it’d been years. They were _adults_. It would be a terribly immature thing to do, show up at her wedding and speak up when the preacher asked speak now or forever hold your peace.

He sighed again.

He’d go. See her again. Verify with his own two eyes that she was indeed happy. Get his closure, and finally, finally let her go properly.

He’d take Mac with him.

Make a little trip of it.

Then he’d have someone to watch _Die Hard_ and drink beer with afterwards.

He looked up at Patty, who was still watching him, that inscrutable look that she so often had on her face.

His brow furrowed. She was hard to read, really was, but he’d known her for quite a while now, and he was getting pretty good at reading her. She’d sounded like she’d spoken from experience when she’d said that weddings were very expensive and a pain to plan…

‘Patty-‘

She bent down and retrieved her dropped boxing gloves, and for a second, Jack caught a glimpse of a gold chain around her neck, a necklace, tucked neatly into her shirt, hidden.

‘Trust me, cancelling a wedding…’ He was quite sure that there was a quiver in her voice. ‘Cancelling a wedding is a very, very unpleasant thing to do.’ Her eyes flickered closed for a moment, and he was dead certain that he’d heard a note of sadness, a note of grief, in her voice.

He suddenly, somehow, realized what must be on the end of that necklace she wore that he’d never noticed before, realized why she’d had to cancel a wedding (her wedding), realized why she never, ever seemed to show any interest in any man (even if quite a lot of men showed interest in her – she _was_ a good-looking woman, after all).

She’d been engaged, and then lost her fiancé. In the worst, most permanent way possible.

He looked into her eyes for a moment.

‘I’m sorry, Patty.’

She gave him a very small, very wan smile.

‘It was a long time ago.’

Jack shrugged.

‘Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.’

He knew _that_ from experience. Not the same as hers; it’d been his father who’d died too soon, whom he’d lost too soon, not his fiancée, but he figured that there were similarities aplenty. They’d both lost someone they dearly loved.

She nodded and that wan little smile grew a little bit wider.

‘Thanks, Jack.’ She started walking away, and then turned around again, and spoke softly, hesitantly. ‘We’d both just made District Attorney. It was going to be a fall wedding.’

He just nodded in response, and with a last wan little smile at him, which he returned, she walked out of the workout area and into the women’s changing rooms.

Jack, too, sighed and headed for the showers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to helloyesimhere for the headcanon that Patricia has a deceased fiancé. This ended up a little more like Fall Sunshine from _Two Paperclips and a Stick of Gum_ than I intended it to be…ah well.
> 
> I’m hoping that Matty as a cat is still somewhat Matty – I feel that she is, firstly, moderately unpredictable (you never really know what she’s about to say, I think), and that she does care about her team (which in this case, comes through in her caring about Jack) and she is quite fair and reasonably open-minded (though, the fact that she hasn’t realized that Mac is good and not just lucky is a bit of a blind spot, I think), but she’s not extremely warm and fuzzy towards them – she’s not as dry and cool/cold as Thornton, I think, and she is a lot more open with them about her thought processes and her feelings about them, but she really doesn’t let them get too big for their boots or too comfortable, either. She does sass them and boss them around quite a bit, I think, which is kind of why she was made a cat, actually.


	3. March, April and May 2017

**MARCH 2017**

**BOZER’S FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

On a fine Friday morning, Bozer sat in his usual spot in his favourite coffee shop, sipping at a coffee and working on his latest script on his laptop. He didn’t have work today, and it was a fine day for writing.

(Sure, he could work on his script at home, but he preferred the coffee shop. People-watching was very inspiring. Besides, their entire small townhouse/large condo – he wasn’t sure what it was, honestly – currently smelt really odd. Something had gone a little wrong with Mac’s latest project – improved laundry detergent – and it had stunk up the house. His best friend had promised to fix it by the end of the weekend, and that he would try and do his very best to fix it tonight when he got home from work.)

He happened to look up just as a beautiful young woman, with dark, curly hair and wearing a cream shirt and black jeans, sat down at the table next to his.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a laptop.

Penny was always going on about the importance of being yourself. Those who matter, don’t mind and those who mind, don’t matter and all. Most of the time, she was addressing Mac, but Bozer was pretty sure she was talking to him a bit too.

Now, he wasn’t Mac.

He wasn’t quite as odd or weird, had always been much more popular, and definitely wasn’t nearly as smart.

But he had his quirks.

His entire life, he’d been the nice, cute, funny guy, the one who made everyone, all the girls included, laugh.

That hadn’t exactly gotten him anywhere.

It was time to try a slightly different tack.

He’d never tried this on a _random_ girl, a random _stranger_ , before, but first time for everything, right? No risk, no reward.

He got up and put on his most charming smirk.

‘Why, _hello_ , future girlfriend! It’s lovely to meet you, I’m Bozer.’

The young woman just looked up at him, her eyebrow quirked, an expression on her face that seemed to show that she was halfway between wanting to laugh at him and slap him.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

She stared at him a moment (he really hoped he wasn’t going to get slapped), and then shook her head dismissively.

‘Hi, Bozer, I’m _not interested_.’

And she turned back to her work.

Bozer sighed internally, but outwardly, he smirked again.

‘Hi, not interested! That a first name or a last name?’ She just rolled her eyes, not even looking up from her laptop. ‘Hey, I’ll grow on you!’

She snorted.

‘Like mould. Great.’

That was probably enough for today. He was starting to feel uncomfortable and a bit creepy.

Bozer sat back down at his own table, and tried to focus on the script he was writing. A TV show script, for once.

MacGyver, the titular hero inspired by his best friend, was in Italy trying to steal a bioweapon.

* * *

Riley rolled her eyes again as Bozer went back to his table.

Sure, he was cute, but those lines?

Ugh.

She focused back on her work.

She was, actually, at work, even if she wasn’t in the nearby FBI office which was her place of employment.

(She was a white hat hacker for the FBI. When she was younger, she’d made some pretty bad choices, dabbled in some black hat stuff, but a brush with the law when she was twenty-two had led to her encountering a local District Attorney, Patricia Thornton, who’d cut her a deal that resulted in her taking up white hat work, and she’d never looked back. Riley had never been into black hat hacking to break the law – she did have a pretty good sense of right and wrong, and there were boundaries she’d never cross – she’d hacked the Pentagon just because she’d wanted to see if she _could_ , after all, not to actually steal anything or commit treason. White hat work more than fulfilled that desire to challenge herself and try, and it paid pretty well too, and there was no risk of jail time. Besides, she could do _good_ with her skills, and that was pretty awesome too.)

Sometimes, her job required her to do her thing not on the FBI network, and not on an FBI laptop. To work anonymously.

Hence, using a clean laptop that had never hooked up to an FBI network, with a carefully-curated profile and history loaded on it, in this coffee shop. (Her co-workers had recommended it to her, since it had the best Wi-Fi connection of all the cafes in the vicinity).

It really did have the best Wi-Fi around.

So, she’d be back here often, actually.

Hopefully Bozer wouldn’t.

* * *

**APRIL 2017**

**BOZER’S (AND RILEY’S) FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

‘…What has she ever done to you? Nothing? Yeah, just what I thought. Leave her alone and pick on someone your own size, you cowards! Actually, don’t pick on anyone!’

As Riley rounded the corner, coming up to the coffee shop, she noticed Bozer standing between a young girl of about twelve, who was holding a robot of sorts, the hydraulic arm on top snapped clean off, and two large boys in the their mid-teens, scolding them.

She walked right past them as the bullies scampered off, and Bozer didn’t even look up at her. He didn’t even seem to notice her, focused as he was on the girl and her robot.

‘Can you fix that?’ The girl nodded shyly. ‘Oh, where are my manners? I’m Wilt Bozer!’

Apparently, Bozer was his surname. She’d been thinking that it was a really weird first name, though Wilt wasn’t really much better.

The girl gave him a small smile.

‘I’m Valerie....thanks, Mr Bozer.’

He chuckled.

‘Just Bozer, Mr Bozer’s my dad.’ He smiled at her. ‘You know, you kind of remind me of my best friend and roomie…’

As Riley ordered her drink and a sandwich on autopilot, she thought about what she’d just seen.

Bozer was a _puzzle_.

In the last month, she’d seen him in the coffee shop a grand total of three times.

Twice, he’d come and hit on her with some sort of awful line.

(Though, he was a bit different from the other men who did that. He, while clearly attracted to her because of her looks, since he didn’t _know_ her and all, had at least noticed her laptop and the fact that she was always hard at work on it, and quite possibly had some clue what she did on it. He’d pulled out a truly dreadful line about her hacking her way into his heart, after all.)

The third time, when she’d been very stressed and clearly not happy and in a terrible mood when he’d come in, he’d just left her completely alone.

She thought that she really should come down harder on him, make it clear that he should leave her alone. That was her usual MO with guys who hit on her and didn’t get the message the first time.

But…it was _weird._

He gave off a different vibe than the others who’d been really persistent. Maybe it was because he was really cute and kind of oddly charming in some way, but he really didn’t give off a creepy vibe. Not at all.

He was really friendly with the other regulars, and the other baristas, including the young women baristas, who all seemed to love him.

There was an odd earnestness about him.

And then that little display earlier?

There was no way he could have possibly known she was coming and set that all up to look good in front of her.

And he’d not even paid her any attention, focusing on Valerie instead…

And he’d seemed really, really genuine.

He confused her.

He was a puzzle, and she wanted to figure him out, if only to try and see if she could.

So she let him keep trying.

* * *

**MAY 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Sitting in their backyard, roasting marshmallows over the fire pit, Mac and Bozer sat in comfortable silence.

Eventually, Bozer broke it.

‘Mac, bro, reckon you could help me with my game? You know, not that mine’s not great or anything, just, you know, sometimes a little help’s good.’

Mac turned in his seat to face his best friend, an eyebrow raised.

‘You’re asking me for help with women. _Me._ My most functional and stable relationship with a woman is my relationship with our mutual ex-girlfriend.’

Bozer shrugged.

‘Well, it sounds stupid when you put it that way…but yeah.’

Mac shook his head, and checked his marshmallow, gathering his thoughts. Bozer had mentioned the really beautiful girl from the coffee shop, who was also sassy and tough and who was always really focused on her laptop, seemed really smart and refused to give him her name.

‘I guess…be yourself. Those lines you said you’re using on Coffee Shop Girl? I’m pretty sure they never work. And if she doesn’t like you for who you really are, it’s never going to work out anyway…so why try to be someone else?’

Bozer sighed and pulled his marshmallow out of the flames.

‘It’s just kind of hard, bro. I’m not sure if she’d like _actual_ Bozer. I mean, sure, I make a mean burger and awesome costumes, but at the end of the day, I’m a washed-up fry cook with filmmaker dreams, and I’m always the comic relief who all the girls love, but not in that way!’

Mac punched Bozer lightly on the arm.

‘Hey, don’t talk about my best friend that way! He’s an incredible and loyal friend, one of the best men I know! Besides, _seriously_? You’ve won over a lot of women. Sure, none of your relationships have stuck yet, but you just haven’t found the right one.’ Mac reached out and put a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. ‘The right one will love you for who you are, Bozer.’

Bozer turned to him.

‘You really think so?’

Mac nodded.

‘I really think so.’

‘Thanks, bro. Appreciate it.’

It was time to try a different approach with Coffee Shop Girl.

He probably should also apologize; his behaviour had been a bit problematic, after all.

* * *

_I do believe, wholeheartedly, in what I told Bozer._

_As my grandfather told me, the right one will love you for who you are._

_And that applies to me, too._

_No matter how it all ended, Nikki did, she really did, for about five years._

_I guess she wasn’t the right one, at least, I really, really hope she **wasn’t** the right one, but it’s the same sort of principle. _

_You might be weird, you might be crazy, you have your quirks and your flaws like everyone else, but the right one will love you for who you really are._

_Of course, sometimes I doubt that._

_Everything’s always easier said than done, and it’s always easier to give advice than to take your own._

_My grandfather also told me that, and it’s become pretty clear through experience as well._

_Though, I guess I don’t even have to worry about that right now, non-existent love life and all._

_Maybe I should go out more, to places that aren’t the hardware store or the local appliances shop._

_I’m not going to meet anyone working on projects at home, after all._

* * *

**BOZER’S (AND RILEY’S) FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

Riley’s brow furrowed as she picked up the note that Bozer had left on her table. He’d come up and left it, silently and without disturbing her, as she’d worked.

This was the fourth one.

_You should try the eclairs, they’re delicious! :)_

He was being even more confusing.

After the incident with Valerie, he’d stopped completely with the lines.

Instead, he’d taken to unobtrusively leaving her notes.

Ones that said things like: _I like the sticker on your laptop; Captain America’s my favourite MCU hero. Kinda reminds me of my BFF._ Or, _I recommend getting a pump of caramel and a sprinkle of cinnamon in your coffee- it’s like a warm hug in drink form!_

Not hitting on her kind of notes.

Just… _friendly_ notes?

She really didn’t know what to make of this guy.

He was definitely a puzzle.

She got up and ordered another coffee, paying for two in order to put a post-it on the pay-it-forward wall. (The coffee shop had a system whereby customers could pay for an extra coffee and put it on the wall, so anyone who needed one could come in and take a post-it off the wall and get a free coffee. It had caught her eye the very first day she’d walked in, honestly.) Riley had not-so-fond memories of her and her mom having to scrimp and save when she was growing up (money had been very tight), and now that she made plenty, she wanted to pass on her good fortune. Maybe it was her way of making up for her past sins or something.

Riley gestured to the wall as the barista (Cynthia, her nametag said – Riley was pretty sure the thirty-something woman was the owner of the place, along with another guy about her age that Riley was pretty sure was called Scott and was her husband) made her coffee.

‘Where’d you guys get the idea? I think I’ve seen a video about another shop somewhere that does this…’

Cynthia smiled as she handed Riley her coffee and a post-it for the wall.

‘One of our customers showed me the video one day, and Scott and I thought it was a good cause.’ Cynthia paused for a moment, as if hesitant to tell her the next piece of information. ‘Actually, it was Bozer, that guy who always tries to talk to you.’ She looked at Riley, square in the eye. ‘He’s really not a creep, I assure you.’

Riley believed her wholeheartedly.

‘I know.’

She nodded as she took her coffee, lost in thought.

Seriously, the guy was an enigma.

She liked puzzles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oddly enough, this fic turned out to be quite Riley/Bozer-centric. What are your thoughts? And yes, as you can tell from the summary, there is a healthy dose of irony in Mac’s little spiel…


	4. June 2017

**JUNE 2017**

**BOZER’S (AND RILEY’S) FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

Riley sighed as she stared at the table top.

It was 10 am on a Saturday.

Very early this morning (at 3 am!) she’d been called in to work because there’d been a security breach at DARPA.

Now, she was in the coffee shop, breach fixed and traced, but also half-asleep.

She was far too tired to drive home in this state, and had stopped by the coffee shop for some food, coffee and a break.

She mechanically ate the raisin toast she’d ordered.

A moment later, a second cup of coffee and a croissant were placed in front of her by Cynthia.

Riley looked up (she hadn’t ordered it), and the older woman gave her a smile and indicated Bozer, who was sitting in his usual seat (she really _was_ tired, she hadn’t even noticed him there).

‘It’s from him.’ Cynthia leaned a little closer to her. ‘He hasn’t been near any of it, I made the coffee myself.’

Riley gave her a small smile, appreciating that Cynthia understood her concerns. (Though, to be honest, she had the feeling that he wouldn’t do something like that, even if she didn’t have much proof.)

Cynthia handed her a post-it, which had a note written on it.

_Hi – I’m not trying to hit on you or anything like that, I promise. I just thought you needed someone to do something nice for you today, a random act of kindness – pay-it-forward, please?_

_And I’m sorry, for how I acted towards you earlier, with the whole persistent pick-up lines thing. It was kinda creepy and I really don’t want to be that guy. I know I was, and I genuinely am sorry. And I know this sounds bad, but I really do want to get to know you, if you’ll give me the chance. No expectations or anything; more friends are always a good thing!_

Riley looked up at Bozer, who waved somewhat sheepishly and shyly at her, before looking away again, as if he didn’t want to pressure her or something.

Words were cheap.

Easy to say.

It was easy to twist them and lie.

His note, his behaviour, everything he did was contrary and contradictory.

He didn’t want to hit on her, he just wanted to do something nice, yet he also wanted to get to know her, he gave her tips on what to order and compliments and seemed to be trying to make conversation…

It seemed, strangely, very genuine.

Very earnest, very human.

He’d seen a pretty girl in a coffee shop that he was intrigued by and he wanted to get to know her, as a person, and was going about it in the best way he could think of.

He messed up a little along the way, but to be honest, she wasn’t exactly sure if there was an absolutely non-creepy, non-problematic way to go about it.

Riley picked up her phone and texted her mom.

It was time to ask her for advice on puzzling out this puzzle that was Bozer.

* * *

**DIANE’S RESIDENCE**

**LA**

* * *

‘…I don’t know, he’s confusing. He seems like a genuinely good, nice guy, not a creep, but…’

Diane nodded as her daughter finished telling her all about this Bozer.

‘You’ve got a good sense for assholes, baby girl. If you think he’s not one, then he probably isn’t.’

Riley snorted. She had a couple of ex-boyfriends in her past who’d definitely fit into the asshole category. She’d been pretty into the bad boy black hats in the past, but they definitely weren’t her type anymore.

She was starting to think that maybe her type was now weird guys in coffee shops who wore cardigans and tartan waistcoats and rescued little girls from bullies and started pay-it-forward walls.

Diane just smiled at her daughter, reached out and tucked one of Riley’s curls back behind her ear.

‘You need to meet a few assholes to get that sense, unfortunately.’ Her mother gave a wry little smile. ‘I certainly had to.’

Riley took a sip of her hot chocolate.

‘Like my dad? And Jack?’

Diane reached out again and brushed her hand along her daughter’s cheek.

‘Jack wasn’t an asshole, Riley.’ Her tone was gently admonishing. ‘He was a good man, a very good man, who did something very, very stupid.’

Riley sighed.

They’d had this conversation many times before.

She held more anger at her mom’s ex than her mom did, honestly.

Jack had been the closest thing she’d ever had to a father.

Then he’d just left them. After that night, when he’d thrown her dad around to stop him from hurting her mom (to stop him from hurting her, in all likelihood), she’d never seen him again.

They’d tried, after that night, to contact him, but he hadn’t returned any of their messages.

She could probably use her skills to track him down, but she really didn’t want to open that wound up again.

Part of Riley wanted to hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d regretted that decision. That maybe he’d tried to come back to them, but couldn’t find them.

(Jack had been due to deploy again just three days after that night. She and her mom had moved, and changed their phone numbers and their email addresses, and told no-one, hoping that it would keep her dad from finding them, as soon as they could after that night.)

(He hadn’t ever bothered them again. To this day, they didn’t know if it was because of their move, or because of what Jack had done for them. Maybe both.)

‘I guess.’

Diane just smiled a little smile, fond and exasperated and a little sad, at her daughter.

‘Maybe…maybe this Bozer guy is the same, baby girl. Maybe he’s a genuinely good, nice, caring man, who thinks that you won’t like him for what he’s really like, so did something really stupid? Maybe he thought that he needed those lines to win you over, and he’s trying to backpedal?’

Riley snorted.

‘Jack was _not_ insecure.’

Diane just shook her head at her daughter, a softness in her eyes.

‘Oh, you just didn’t see it, Riley. He had his insecurities, alright, had his faults, too. But he was a really, really good man, got better the more you got to know him, too.’ She reached out and put her hand on her daughter’s cheek. ‘Maybe get to know this Bozer. Your coffee shop sounds like a nice, busy, public place. Safe. Maybe just have a chat with him.’

Riley nodded slowly, and reached out and hugged her mom, who hugged her back just as tightly.

‘Thanks, Mom.’

Diane kissed her daughter’s forehead.

‘I’m always here for you, baby girl.’

And that really was the truth.

* * *

**BOZER’S (AND RILEY’S) FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

The next Saturday, Riley walked into the coffee shop, without her laptop. She wasn’t here for work.

Bozer, as she’d hoped, was sitting at his usual table, focused on the laptop in front of him.

She walked up to him.

‘Do those lines you used ever work?’

He looked up at her, surprised.

‘Umm….well, no, not really, at least, I think… I mean, I don’t exactly use them on random girls in coffee shops all the time...’

Riley shifted her weight almost awkwardly.

‘You…you should try being yourself. You’re actually kind of cute.’

He looked a little surprised, and then grinned up at her slowly.

‘You think I’m cute?’

She bit her lip and shrugged, affecting a more casual air.

‘Yeah, kind of.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And thanks. For the coffee and the croissant.’

He smiled.

‘My pleasure. Did you remember to pay it forward?’

She nodded, returning the smile and gesturing at the wall covered in post-its.

‘Yeah, I put it on the wall.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m Riley, by the way.’

He did a little fist-pump under the table (not that that prevented her from noticing), and grinned wider, then quirked an eyebrow at her.

‘Is that Riley as in Nyota or Riley as in Uhura?’

Apparently, he liked the _Star Trek_ reboots. Mentally, she gave him brownie points for the Uhura reference. She _loved_ Uhura.

‘Riley as in Nyota.’

He grinned even wider, and as she looked down at him, she happened to notice what he was working on.

He seemed to be trying to do some CGI on a video.

He was doing a _terrible_ job.

The image on the screen showed a young man covered in ping pong balls and turned green.

‘What is _that_ supposed to be?’

She pointed at the screen.

He looked a little sheepish.

‘Umm…well, that’s actually my roomie-slash-BFF, but he’s supposed to be the monster who eats General Wang in my latest movie…’

She watched as he made a couple of changes, then lost her patience with watching him mess it up even more, and leaned over and seized control of his laptop.

‘You’re doing it wrong, you need to…’

* * *

Later, when his roommate (Mac, his name was – he apparently not only played a green monster in this movie – Bozer was an aspiring filmmaker and part-time fry cook - he also played General Wang, since he was the only guy that Bozer knew who spoke Mandarin) no longer looked like he’d been covered in ping pong balls and turned green, and looked a lot more like a green monster, Riley looked up at Bozer, sipping on her coffee.

‘Why’d you use those lines, if you knew that they never work?’

He shrugged a little awkwardly.

‘Well…I wanted you to like me, and I don’t think you’d like me if you knew actual-me…’

She nodded slowly.

‘I actually quite like actual-you.’ She looked away, not quite able to meet his eyes. ‘I don’t know if you’d like me very much if you knew actual-me, though.’

She had made some bad decisions in her past. She wasn’t an angel, and Bozer kind of seemed like one, to be honest.

He gave her a (cute) little smile when she turned back to face him.

‘Well…I like the Riley I know so far. I’d like to get to know her better.’

She returned that smile, nodding slowly.

‘I…I’d like to get to know the real Bozer better too.’

He nodded and gave a little grin.

‘Well, we’re both here pretty often…how about we save a table and share?’

Her smile widened.

‘I’d like that.’

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

That same Saturday, Mac put the end of the vacuum cleaner hose in the kiddie pool full of ball-pit balls on his lawn, and turned it on.

(He was using the balls to test the vacuum cleaner; he’d increased the power of the blow function in an attempt to turn the kiddie pool and the vacuum cleaner into a hot tub.)

He cursed as the balls went flying violently. He’d _way_ over-increased the power of the vacuum cleaner’s blow function, it seemed. Apparently, the findings from his small-scale tests, using both water and the ball-pit balls, didn’t translate very well to full-scale.  

He cursed again as he realized that half of the balls had wound up in his neighbour’s backyard, instead of his.

Their last neighbour, a rather eccentric elderly Russian who was a retired Caltech professor, Alexander Orlov, who’d always been very appreciative of and interested in Mac’s projects, had moved out very recently, into a nursing home, and Mac had yet to meet their new neighbour.

He supposed that it was very unlikely that he’d gotten lucky yet again, and would have another neighbour who also thought his projects were cool.

He’d better try and run some damage control.

* * *

As Mac reached his neighbour’s front door, a car pulled into the driveway, and a woman who looked to be in her early twenties (a beautiful young woman, an unhelpful voice in his brain supplied), dressed in scrubs with her brown hair pulled and pinned back, got out.

She looked rather quizzically at him, and he smiled what he hoped was a fairly charming smile, and held out a hand for her to shake.

‘Hi, I’m Angus MacGyver, but please call me Mac. I live next door, and my balls are in your yard.’ He realized how odd that sounded and his ears burned under his hair, and he continued. ‘Uh…my ball-pit balls, that is.’

She took his hand and shook it firmly with a smile.

‘I’m Beth Taylor, it’s nice to meet you, Mac.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘How…how did they get there?’

‘I…err…over-amplified the blow function on my vacuum cleaner and sent them flying.’

She cocked her head to the side.

‘Why did you amplify the blow function on your vacuum cleaner?’

She sounded more genuinely curious than anything else.

(The unhelpful voice in his brain was now refusing to shut up.)

‘I’m making a hot tub using a kiddie pool and a vacuum cleaner, but of course, the force exerted by a standard vacuum cleaner isn’t strong enough to displace the water sufficiently, so…’

He cut himself off. Most people that he met randomly weren’t really interested in the nitty gritty details.

Beth simply nodded, considering.

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t be, since that’s _really_ not the intended purpose at all.’ She smiled at him. ‘Still, it sounds really cool.’ She sounded like she meant it. The voice in his head pointed out that she either hadn’t decided that he was crazy yet or really didn’t mind that he was, which really was something. Mac told it to shut up again. Then, she narrowed her brown eyes at him. ‘Wait a moment…have you electrocuted yourself making it yet?’

He raised his hands into the air in supplication and smirked a little.

‘I’m an engineer at JPL, and I went to MIT and did mechanical and electrical engineering, I know what I’m doing…’

_Yes, I’m showing off a bit._

_Look, I’m talking to my beautiful and clearly intelligent new neighbour, who thinks that my kiddie-pool-vacuum-cleaner hot tub is actually cool, for the first time…_

_Can you blame me?_

‘And I have a medical degree from Northwestern and I’m a fully-qualified ER doctor.’ She jabbed at the air in front of his chest. ‘You’ve electrocuted yourself, haven’t you?’

He nodded sheepishly.

‘Well…not badly?’

She shook her head with a wry little smile, muttering under her breath.

‘You are _definitely_ a terrible patient…’ She reached into her purse and pulled out her keys and led him up to her front door. ‘Now, let’s go pick up those balls.’

* * *

As they threw the balls back over the fence, Mac turned to the young woman beside him.

If she was actually the age she looked (though, he supposed, she might just look young for her age – Jack claimed that _he_ didn’t even look twenty-five), she was very young to be a fully-qualified doctor, and he had a theory why that might be the case, and he wanted to know if he was right. He just really wanted to _know_ , in all honesty.

(He just liked knowing things. When Jack had first gotten Matty, and refused to tell anyone how he’d come to own a cat that he claimed hated him, it had driven Mac insane.)

‘I know this is rude and all, I’m sorry in advance, but how old are you?’

She just smiled at him.

‘You get brownie points for not making a Dougie Howser joke. And I’ll forgive it coming from you, since I bet you get asked that all the time too.’ She bit her lip. ‘Besides, I kind of wanted to ask you the same thing.’ He smiled back at her as she answered his question. ‘I’m twenty-five.’

Apparently, she wasn’t _quite_ as young as she looked. Still, he supposed, a couple of years didn’t make much difference at this age.

‘Me too.’ He did some quick mental arithmetic in his head; it seemed like his theory was right. Medical school took four years, and an ER residency three, presuming that she was fresh out of her residency, since it was June and she’d just moved in…’Finished high school at sixteen, undergrad in two years?’

She nodded with a little grin on her face.

‘Two years at Purdue. Let me guess, started at MIT at sixteen, finished by eighteen, followed by a Masters or a PhD, then off to JPL?’

He shook his head with a chuckle. The Army _was_ rather left-field, people never tended to guess that.

‘Close, but no. Straight into the Army after MIT, actually. I was an EOD tech.’

Her eyes widened.

‘Thank you for your service.’ She shook her head, then looked up (she was rather short) into his eyes and nodded. ‘That’s…that’s a really admirable thing to do.’ Her smile turned more wry and a little more sheepish. ‘Is it bad that I’m imagining these angry professors all yelling at you and chasing you around because you’re not doing your PhD in their labs?’

He chuckled and smirked.

‘There’s actually a story there…’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you all think of the Riley/Diane bit? (I do love their relationship, but since we only got a little bit of it in Scissors, I’m not sure how well I’ve written it…)
> 
> And Mac finally met his new neighbour! Yes, rom-com tropes abound in this fic. This is my take on the ‘hot neighbour’ trope, Mac-style!


	5. August 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts on 1.16, Hook, are at the end of this chapter.

**AUGUST 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Early one Saturday afternoon, Mac more-or-less wrestled with his latest project: a Roomba-style automatic lawnmower. His and Bozer’s lawn was tiny, with most of their small backyard taken up by the deck (though, he supposed, it was larger than Beth’s – her yard was maybe 2/3s the size of theirs), and frankly, mowing it the normal way was a waste of time and effort. Hence, the Roomba lawnmower.

_Yes, my brain jumps **way** too easily to my beautiful and intelligent neighbour._

_But can you blame me?_

_I’m a twenty-five year old, straight, single male. I enjoy the company of a beautiful, intelligent, kind young woman, especially one who thinks that my jury-rigged hot tub is a really fine piece of engineering._

_Sue me, as Bozer would say._

He smiled as the final piece slotted into place, and in the next breath, swore as a sharp pain tore through the back of his left shoulder.

He put down the lawnmower carefully, and raised his hand to the area, touching it gently. His fingers came away covered in blood, just as he’d suspected.

He groaned.

It was an awkward area to clean and bandage himself (he wasn’t stupid, he did know that he couldn’t just leave it), and he also really had no way of examining it properly to see if it was deep enough that it needed stitches (again, he wasn’t stupid, even if he’d developed a bit of a reputation for being rather resistant to medical attention – he just hated feeling useless and hated not being able to do his job, whatever his job was).

_Yeah, I’m never going to live this down when Bozer finds out, but…_

_I’m pretty sure Beth’s home right now. She was just leaving for work last night when I took the trash out, which means that she had a night shift, and since it’s almost 1 pm, she should definitely be home and hopefully awake now._

_I live next door to a doctor. A very nice doctor._

_I currently need medical attention._

_There is only one reasonable course of action._

Mac grabbed a wad of paper towels and held them to his shoulder to try and stem the bleeding and headed next door.

* * *

He rang the doorbell.

About thirty seconds later, the door opened, revealing Beth in flannel pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with _The name’s bond, ionic bond, taken, not shared,_ her hair messy from sleep.

He smiled despite his bleeding shoulder.

(The unhelpful voice in his brain pointed out that she looked really, really adorable.)

‘Hi, Beth, I hope I didn’t wake you-‘

She indicated his shoulder that he was still holding the paper towels to, and opened the door wider and sighed, shaking her head.

‘Inside, _now_.’ Her tone brooked no argument and sounded rather professional, like he imagined she’d sound with her patients. He stepped inside, and she pointed down the hallway. ‘The bathroom’s the first door on the right.’

Obediently, he walked down the corridor (passing her kitchen along the way; there was a bowl of oatmeal on the counter, he supposed he’d interrupted her breakfast, or maybe brunch, given that it was afternoon), and entered the bathroom.

She followed a moment later, a stool in one hand and a rather large first aid kit (well, she was a doctor) in the other, her hair tied up.

She put down the stool and he sat down, his back to her. She took one look at his shoulder, and then moved around to his front, pulling on a pair of gloves as she did so.

‘We’re going to have to get your shirt off.’ He made to start undoing the buttons, but she shook her head at him. ‘Sit still, let me do it, moving that shoulder’s got to hurt.’ She started undoing the buttons of his shirt with a sigh. ‘Which one of your projects did this to you?’

He gave a small smile.

‘Automatic lawnmower. Kind of like a Roomba, but for lawns.’

She shook her head with a little snort of laughter, parting his shirt and pulling it off him as gently as she could as she finished undoing the buttons.

‘Let me guess. You watched a few too many infomercials, and got inspired?’

There was a rather-deliberate sounding casualness to her tone. He looked down for a moment at his now-bare torso, and then up at her. He knew that she noticed the scars, they were fairly obvious (he’d taken a load of shrapnel to the chest and a gunshot wound to boot, that day in Afghanistan, after all), and he knew that she’d recognize them for what they were, being a doctor, especially since she did know he was an ex-Army EOD. For a moment, he looked into her eyes, seeing the hint of curiosity, but mostly sadness, in there, before those emotions slid away and were replaced by some sort of caring professionalism. A very doctor-y look.

‘Late night television is dangerous, apparently.’

She stepped around him again, shaking her head with a little smile at his comment, and started examining his shoulder properly.

‘Well, you’re lucky, it’s not deep enough to need stitches, as long as you promise to be a good patient and be relatively careful.’

He nodded with a small smile at the firmness and the hint of a threat in her tone.

‘I promise.’

She nodded, satisfied, and reached into the medical kit on the vanity next to them.

‘I’ll clean and bandage it. I bet you know the drill, keep it clean and dry, and get Bozer, or me, I suppose, to change it for you once a day. If you don’t have the supplies, I can give you some. I’m guessing you’ve had a tetanus shot within the last five years?’

He nodded.

‘Yeah.’ They were silent for a moment, as she worked and he sat there, staring at the tiles in her bathroom. (The pattern was uninteresting and familiar; it was the exact same one in the bathrooms in his and Bozer’s place.). Then, he took a deep breath and broke that silence. ‘Afghanistan, three and a half years ago. I took a bullet and a load of shrapnel to the chest.’ Her hands stilled, and he continued. ‘No, I didn’t run around in a warzone without body armour. There…there was a bomb. I didn’t have time to disarm it, so I decided to use my vest to dull the blast and tossed it down a shallow well.’ He sighed and indicated his chest with his right hand. ‘That happened, and Jack saved my life.’ She’d met the older man just the week before, when he’d happened to arrive at Mac’s just as she was leaving for work. ‘We both got an honourable discharge for medical reasons after.’

He heard the sound of a sterile bandage’s package being ripped open, and then he felt her gently attach the bandage to his skin.

‘I wasn’t going to ask, Mac.’ She slipped back around to stand in front of him, pulling off the bloodied gloves and putting them in the bin. ‘Curiosity killed the cat…’

Her eyes held hints of admiration and curiosity, but mostly sympathy and sadness, as they lingered on his gunshot scar for a moment.

He couldn’t blame her in the slightest for the curiosity.

There was obviously more to the story, but he really couldn’t tell her.

A lot of it was classified.

He couldn’t tell her about chasing The Ghost, Pena’s killer, the man who’d taken his mentor’s life just weeks before his daughter’s birth, to a compound with Jack and the rest of their team. Couldn’t tell her about how they’d caught the man, but how it’d all been a trap, with one last surprise to boot. Couldn’t tell her about them all being pinned by enemy fire in the compound, about the bomb-within-a-bomb, the one that would have killed the whole team, him and his brothers-in-arms, if he hadn’t come up with that insane, desperate idea.

He couldn’t (wouldn’t) tell her the details, either. The ones that weren’t classified.

(A little voice in his head pointed out, at least _not yet_.)

Couldn’t tell her about taking that bullet, as he’d turned to run away from the well, shouting at the others to get as clear as they could, couldn’t tell her how Jack had dragged him, mostly unconscious, away as best as he could, saved his life, in all likelihood, taking a bullet to the knee and severely aggravating an old wrist injury, re-injuring his wrist, really, as he did so.

And he wasn’t going to mention the medals sitting in a shoebox in the corner of his closet, either.

She looked up into his eyes again, and he responded after a beat, with a tiny smile.

‘But satisfaction brought him back.’

She returned the wan little smile, and then it fell away.

‘I’m sorry, Mac.’

He gave a half-shrug, moving only his uninjured shoulder.

‘It’s been three and a half years. It was a long time ago.’

She, too, shrugged.

‘Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.’ She paused for a moment, glancing down at his torso again, and then the concerned doctor look was back in her eyes. ‘No physical pain, or freedom of movement issues?’

It was half a question and half a statement.

He shook his head with a miniscule, wry smile at that.

‘No, there were concerns, but apparently I have the devil’s own luck.’ He sighed. ‘Just got the scars.’

She gave a sad little nod, and there was quite-comfortable silence for a moment.

Then, Mac broke it, smiling up at her.

‘Thanks, Beth.’

She smiled back.

‘Well, I am a doctor.’ Her smile widened a little, becoming more teasing. ‘Though, as payment for this and all _hopefully very rare_ future medical care, though I presume you’ll need it more often than either of us would like, I expect you to show me your Roomba-lawnmower when it is done, and I may demand that you make me one.’

His smile widened too.

‘Deal.’

* * *

**BOZER AND RILEY’S FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

That same Saturday, Riley’s brow furrowed as Bozer stared at her from across their table at their favourite coffee shop.

‘…You have never played mini golf.’

She nodded.

‘Yeah, what’s-‘

‘That is _unacceptable_!’ Bozer threw his hands into the air. ‘You can’t go through life having never, ever sampled the wonderful delight that is mini golf!’ He got up and picked up his bag. ‘We’re going to fix this right now!’

Riley just stared at him, her mouth somewhat agape.

‘What…like _literally_ , right now? Go play mini golf _now_?’

He just nodded resolutely.

‘Yeah, right now. This cannot continue!’ He paused for a moment. ‘Unless you’re working, of course, I mean, I’m pretty observant, and I’m pretty sure you’re not on the clock…’

That was true. He had quite quickly realized that when she came in here on weekdays when he was here, while she’d sit down at their table and greet him, she’d also quickly pull out her laptop and start working, while most weekends, unless she’d been called in to work because of an emergency, she’d chat with him instead, before pulling out her laptop to work on a personal project. He’d also noticed that she used different laptops for work and for personal things, so different laptops depending on the day of the week, and coupled with the fact that as they weren’t far from the FBI office, occasionally, an agent in a suit or even an FBI jacket would come in, and sometimes, she’d recognize one of them or they’d seem to recognize her, he’d worked out that she worked for the FBI.

Thankfully, he didn’t share that information, though, in all honesty, her job wasn’t classified, really, so it wouldn’t be a huge problem as long as he didn’t broadcast it online.

And if he did, she could probably find a way to limit the distribution of that information.

Riley looked up at him, somewhat hesitant.

They were friends, now, quite good friends, actually.

They had a sort-of standing date at the coffee shop (they met there every Saturday), and she’d given him most of the digits of her phone number (it was almost a joke of sorts, now, between them, him getting a new digit every week or so)…but doing something new like playing mini golf? Was that a date?

Which begged the question, did she feel ready to go on a date with him? Ready to let down her walls a bit more?

(She wanted to go on a date with him, _eventually._ Sure, he had cheesy and questionable lines and slight creeper tendencies, but Bozer really was a really good, really nice, sweet, loyal, funny guy. He loved movies and had an oddly encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything movie-related, and cooking or food-related, plus some odd topics like accounting. He liked to tell funny stories about his crazy roommate and best friend since the fifth grade, Mac, whom he clearly loved very much. And he was really cute.)

Bozer seemed to pick up on her hesitation, because he just smiled at her.

‘Hey, we’re friends, and friends play mini golf together. Me and Mac, we’ve been a couple of times.’ He leaned down closer to her with a grin and a shake of his head. ‘ _Never_ bet against my bro on his mini golf skills. He says it’s all angles and stuff, and since he’s a genius and all…he never loses.’ Bozer shook his head again. ‘I learnt that the hard way…’

She gave a snort of laughter, and nodded.

‘Okay, let’s go play mini golf.’

His grin just grew wider, and she felt herself grinning too.

* * *

**ICE-CREAM SHOP NEAR BOZER’S FAVOURITE MINI GOLF PLACE**

**LA**

* * *

Riley sucked her chocolate ice-cream off her spoon, glancing over at Bozer, who was enthusiastically eating a sundae, and broke the comfortable silence they were in.

‘My…my dad’s an ass. Like really, an ass.’ Bozer froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth, and just looked at her. Riley glanced down at her own ice-cream, and then back up at him. ‘It was just me and my mom when I was growing up. Money was tight, she had to work like crazy, we had to deal with my dad…’ Bozer put his spoon down, seemingly having lost his appetite, and Riley forced herself to keep meeting his eyes. The sympathy, the kindness and the softness and the gentleness in them helped. ‘…I guess that’s why I’d never played mini golf. Frivolous things like that...’ She shrugged. ‘No money, no time, no inclination, I don’t know…’

He took a deep breath.

‘I’m sorry, Riley, I’m…I’m so sorry that it was like that. Words are cheap and all, not sure how much they help, but…I’m sorry.’ Bozer hesitated for a moment, reaching out the hand that had previously held his spoon a little, almost as if he wanted to take her hand, but didn’t. ‘God…I knew you were strong, but I didn’t think you were this strong…’ He looked up into her eyes and then nodded resolutely. ‘We are going to do the best fix-it we can. We’re going to try all those things that you didn’t get to do when you were a kid and…’

She suddenly reached out and squeezed his hand for a moment, and then pulled away. He just looked down, blinking, as if he’d imagined that.

‘My…my childhood wasn’t all horrible, Bozer. My mom…my mom is amazing.’

‘Like mother, like daughter.’

There was a soft little smile on his face, and she ducked her head slightly with an answering smile.

Somehow, that opened the floodgates.

She told him all about her abusive drunk of a father, she told him about her scrapes with the law and her bad decisions, and how a District Attorney had cut her a deal and got her out of that life. She told him about her horrible exes, she told him everything.

Except about Jack.

She didn’t mention her mom’s ex-boyfriend, the one who’d walked out on them, the closest thing she’d ever had to a father.

That still felt like too much, too raw. Too painful.

And he listened.

He comforted.

He squeezed back gently whenever she reached out to take his hand, rubbed his thumb along her hand in a soothing gesture.

And he talked, too.

Told her about the girls in his past, including the one he’d spent two years with, part of that long-distance, thought might well be the one.

Told her about how he’d thought that maybe, being the nice, loyal, funny guy wasn’t enough.

Told her, _really, really_ told her, why he’d tried those lines on her so long ago.

And she listened, and comforted when she could, reassured when she could.

And they held hands across the table, ice-cream melting and forgotten, and it was the best not-date she’d ever been on.

(She gave him the rest of her phone number.)

(She’d barely left the ice cream shop when she got the first cat meme.)

(It was ridiculous, but she laughed anyway.)

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Sending Riley yet another cat meme with a grin, Bozer walked straight into the kitchen of his and Mac’s place.

His best friend was currently stirring a pot over the stove, and looked up and smiled at him, and then reached into the cutlery drawer and pulled out a spoon, tasting what looked (and smelled) like pasta sauce. The blonde swallowed and nodded with satisfaction.

Bozer noted that the other man was moving just slightly oddly. He seemed to be favouring his left shoulder somewhat. Internally, Bozer sighed.

Mac had an unfortunate tendency to not take very good care of himself when sick or injured; he tended to brush it off and try and do whatever he felt he had to do, be that finish off a project or go to work or school.

That had led Bozer to develop mother hen tendencies when it came to his best friend.  

* * *

‘Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes. I’ve just got to cook the pasta now…’

Mac trailed off as he noticed the look on his best friend’s face. He sighed.

_Well, he cares. He really does._

_And I’m so going to get it…but he **is** my best friend._

_Besides, turnabout’s fair play. He **did** see Riley today, and judging from that grin…_

‘I cut the back of my shoulder while working on my Roomba-lawnmower. Beth’s already cleaned and bandaged it for me, and I promised her I’d be a good patient and be careful with it.’

Bozer’s entire expression changed from concerned to cat-with-the-cream in an instant. He waggled his eyebrows at his roommate.

‘Did she like what she saw? I mean, bro, you _do_ work out, and chicks dig scars…’

Mac shook his head at his roommate, rolling his eyes. Bozer had been trying to convince him of the whole chicks-dig-scars thing since Afghanistan; Mac was still entirely unconvinced.

‘She’s a _doctor_ , Bozer. She was very professional about it.’ He paused for a moment, turning back to the stove and putting the pasta into the saucepan full of water that had just started boiling. He stirred the pasta for a minute, and then turned back to his best friend and spoke, voice softer. ‘I told her about Afghanistan.

With a slight, gentle smile, Bozer reached out and clasped his best friend’s shoulder.

‘I’m proud of you, bro, and I reckon Dr Lau would be too.’

Dr Lau was the shrink that Mac had seen regularly for just over a year on his return from Afghanistan.

Mac smiled back at his best friend.

‘Thanks, Bozer. I appreciate it.’

His best friend grinned back, and then smirked.

‘Now, when are you going to go next door and ask her out?’

Mac groaned, and shook his head.

_I, despite what Jack and Bozer think, am not entirely oblivious._

_I am **not** entirely hopeless with women._

_I am quite sure that there’s something there._

_But still…we do live next door to one another. Lots of potential for a **really** awkward situation there._

_Besides, slow and steady wins the race, right?_

‘It’s called taking it slow, Bozer, and waiting for the right moment.’

Bozer just shook his head.

‘Your brain works at like light-speed, but you seriously move about as fast as a snail when it comes to the ladies, bro.’ He jogged the blonde with his elbow on the right side, quite gently so as not to jostle him too much – he was injured, after all. ‘Am I going to have to make you lose another bet?’

(When Mac was fourteen, Bozer had contrived to have Mac lose a bet so that he’d had to ask Darlene Martin, whom he’d had a huge crush on, to Prom. Unfortunately, that hadn’t gone well at all, and Mac had spent Prom night at home, watching a live shuttle launch on TV, with only his grandfather for company until Bozer and Penny had shown up after Prom with ice-cream.)

Mac rolled his eyes, shaking his head with a smile.

‘ _No_ , Bozer.’ His smile became more of a smirk, and he reached out with his right hand and punched his best friend lightly in the arm. ‘How was your standing not-date with Riley? Got her whole number yet?’

_As I said, turnabout’s fair play._

Bozer just shook his head.

‘Guess I _was_ asking for that, wasn’t I, bro?’ He grinned. ‘We went and played mini golf, had some ice-cream.’ Mac, knowing what a change that was, knowing, from what Bozer had told him, that Riley was hesitant and rather closed-off, smiled. Bozer’s expression softened. ‘And we talked, really talked.’ He looked up at the blonde, who just squeezed his shoulder with an answering soft smile. ‘I really did know she was tough, and I figured that she’d been hurt in the past or something like that…but seriously, bro, she’s tougher than I could have ever imagined.’

_It is odd, really._

_Riley is also the name of the daughter of Jack’s ex-girlfriend, Diane._

_He still doesn’t talk much about them; I don’t even know their surname. I think it still hurts him. Maybe more than Sarah getting married, in some ways._

_Funnily enough, Bozer’s Riley also likes computers, her mother’s name is also Diane, and she’s about the right age, too, as far as I know. Jack said Riley was about my age, I think, one night in Afghanistan._

_What a weird coincidence, right?_

He and Bozer avoided talking too much about Riley or Beth in front of or to Jack.

They were trying to be sensitive to Jack’s situation, with Sarah’s wedding next month and all.

Besides, the fact that Bozer’s Coffee Shop Girl (as he’d called her for ages because he hadn’t known her name) was also called Riley would probably dredge up nasty memories for Jack, and they didn’t want to do that.

As for keeping what was growing between him and Beth, whom Bozer called The Girl Next Door (he was really getting into the code names) sometimes, on the down-low, as Bozer described it?

Well, Jack’s teasing drove him crazy, even more than Bozer’s, and there was something to be said about keeping something like this on the down-low, at least for a little while.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes, more rom-com tropes! Suspend your disbelief about the fact that no-one, not even Mac, has connected the dots on Jack and Riley yet, please?
> 
> The reason why, in at least two of my stories to date, the Riley/Bozer mini golf thing happens is because of that scene in canon where they’re hitting rubber ducks into Mac and Bozer’s neighbour’s pool using golf clubs and Riley’s like ‘I have no idea what this game is, but it is fun’. That is also part of the inspiration behind why Mac buys and owns strange items and/or strange quantities of items in a lot of my works, because I have no clue why they have so many rubber ducks, and it amuses me to think that maybe they were on sale at Walmart or something and Mac brought them home because he thought they might be useful for something or was hit with half a crazy idea when he saw them.
> 
> Thoughts on Hook – I adored it, it was so much fun, it was fairly light-hearted, there were lots of funny moments and great family/friendship moments, and I’m glad that Jack and Matty are moving past whatever happened in Chechnya. (It actually makes me glad, despite the fact that I, like Mac, Bozer and Riley, want to know what it was, that they aren’t telling us, for some reason…) I suspect that we’re going to have a little influx of episode tags that are either that conversation, Jack telling the team the story, or truth or dare games in the next couple of days…


	6. September 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strap yourselves in; this one is kind of like a rollercoaster…or maybe like Mac’s driving in Fish Scaler! (He’s still a better driver than me, TBH.)

**SEPTEMBER 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

At 2 pm on a Sunday, having spent his morning working on a gumball machine-based spaghetti machine (of both kinds – it was going to make pasta, extremely inefficiently, albeit amusingly) that he was working on as entertainment for Penny’s Halloween party (well, she _had_ asked him to bring a surprise, and Bozer had just brought home that old gumball machine, and he’d been eating a bowl of spaghetti and inspiration had just struck), and having just finished lunch, Mac looked out through the glass doors leading to his backyard.

His heart sank and he felt a sense of panic.

_Oh, no…_

His automatic lawnmower was _not_ obediently mowing the lawn like it was supposed to. Like he’d turned it on to do this morning.

Instead, his grass had been mowed in some sort of Pacman-maze-like pattern, and the lawnmower had somehow broken through the fence, and into Beth’s yard.

Quickly seizing the kill switch he’d made for the Roomba-lawnmower (Last week, he and Bozer and Jack had had quite the discussion on robots and AI and the robo-pocalypse, as Jack called it. While Jack’s beliefs were firmly rooted in science fiction, and not science fact – he really hadn’t considered Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics – and the lawnmower wasn’t exactly an AI anyway, Mac _had_ created a kill switch just in case.), he rushed over to the fence between his and Beth’s yards (which was leaning at forty-degree angle and had a very large hole in the bottom of it), and peered over it.

His rogue lawnmower had apparently also decided to mow her lawn in a crazy pattern…and was currently starting to grind through the edge of her deck nearest the lawn and make its way under it. It was about a third of a way in.  

Mac swore and hit the kill switch, and then ran back inside, through his house, and to Beth’s front door.

_Great work, MacGyver._

_Normal guys give the woman they’re interested in flowers or chocolates._

_You, apparently, give her a ruined fence, yard and deck, courtesy of your rogue automatic Roomba-style lawnmower._

He rang the doorbell, and the door opened immediately. Beth stood on the other side, standing rather lopsidedly, as she was wearing only one boot. The other one was right beside her, and it looked like he’d caught her in the middle of putting them on.

‘Oh, hi, Mac. I was just about to come over and get you; I think your Roomba lawnmower’s gone a bit rogue…’

He nodded sheepishly at her, as she slipped off her boot and led him through her home and towards the backyard.

‘I think it’s gone _more_ than a bit rogue. I’m really, really sorry, Beth…’ They arrived in the backyard, and looked over the ruined fence, the _interestingly_ patterned grass, and the damaged deck. He knelt down and prised the culprit out of her porch. ‘I really am very, very sorry. I’ll fix your deck and the fence, I promise. I don’t break my promises, ever…’

She sighed and looked down at him and the lawnmower in his hands for a moment, then shook her head with a wry little smile.

‘Well, your projects really are always _interesting_.’ She looked more serious for a moment. ‘It’s alright, Mac, I forgive you. You’re human, and failure’s a part of science, anyway. A _big_ part of science.’ Then, she smirked. ‘Though, maybe we’ve got a sort-of _cis_ -platin style failure on our hands. Mowing the lawn is _clearly_ not this robot’s calling, but maybe you could consider entering it in a robot fighting tournament?’

He stared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter. After a moment, she started giggling too. (This whole situation was quite nonsensical and, he supposed, his reaction probably looked absurd.)

A little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Jack told him to _not let this woman go without a fight_. Another voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his grandfather just told him to _go ahead and ask her to marry you already, since you’re already on your knees and all._

He told both voices to shut up (clearly, neither of them understood the value of taking it slow, besides, her yard _was_ a mess and it _was_ his fault – not the right time!), and then got up and smiled at her.

‘Seriously, thanks, Beth, I appreciate it. _Really, really_ appreciate it. I’ll start fixing up your yard tomorrow, straight after work.’

She smiled back at him.

‘No need to rush, I know you’ll do it, and do it well.’ She looked more wry again, and poked him in the chest. ‘But I expect a ringside seat, when your Roomba-lawnmower makes its debut in the ring!’

He chuckled again.

‘You’ll be a VIP, of course, since you’re the one who suggested the career change!’

_I **really** lucked out in the neighbour department, didn’t I?_

* * *

**SARAH’S REHEARSAL DINNER**

**SAN FRANCISCO**

* * *

He wasn’t a member of the wedding party, or family, but somehow, Jack found himself and his plus-one (Mac, of course) invited to Sarah’s rehearsal dinner.

Though, he supposed, a good number of out-of-town guests of hers had been invited. He supposed that she wanted to be able to see them and catch up with them before the big day and all.

He was introducing Mac to Thomas Davies when she walked up to him, her fiancé Jeff in tow.

‘Jack, I’m so glad you could make it!’

She looked happy.

Radiant, really.

Jack swallowed the lump in his throat, and returned her hug.

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Sarah.’ He paused for a second. ‘Congratulations.’

She let go of him and gestured to her fiancé.

‘Jack, this is Jeff. Jeff, this is Jack.’

The other man grinned at him, and, much to Jack’s surprise and also to his discomfort, pulled him into a hug.

‘She says you watched her back for years and saved her life at least half a dozen times, so thank you, man, from the bottom of my heart.’

Jack hugged him back rather awkwardly.

‘Uh…thanks, man, it was my pleasure.’

They let go of each other, and Jack swore he caught a tiny note of sadness in Sarah’s eyes, as she watched them with a smile.

Maybe he was imagining things.

Projecting.

He gestured to Mac, who waved a little awkwardly at the couple.

‘Sarah, Jeff, this is Mac. I met the kid over there.’

He didn’t need to specify where _there_ was. Sarah, at least, would understand.

He pushed down that little voice that complained bitterly that Jeff might not, and probably wouldn’t ever understand exactly what she’d been through.

Unlike him.

* * *

As Jeff and Sarah moved away slightly to greet Davies, Mac turned to Jack, his eyes a little wide, and the two men exchanged a look.

Jeff _did_ share quite a lot of physical similarities with Jack.

Not enough that they could be mistaken for twins, or probably not even brothers, but perhaps cousins.

Maybe that just spoke to Sarah’s type in men.

Or, maybe…

Jack sighed.

He wasn’t sure if he found that thought comforting or upsetting.

* * *

**MAC AND JACK’S HOTEL ROOM**

**SAN FRANCISCO**

* * *

Jack sighed as he sat on his bed, staring out of the window and into the distance.

After the rehearsal dinner, they’d gone back to their room, and Mac had immediately declared that he was going to go buy beer – lots of beer – and practically ordered Jack to go take a shower.

Showers, Jack supposed, were therapeutic, which was probably why Mac had suggested it, but he hadn’t listened, and instead, he was sitting here, staring into nothingness and thinking.

Mac was a little awkward and not the absolute best in the world at comforting or dealing with this sort of stuff, but you could never say that he didn’t try his big heart out.

He and Bozer had done a lot for Jack these past few months, in the lead-up to Sarah’s wedding.

Mac had come all the way to San Francisco with him, taking a few days off work to do so. He had complained about Jack’s country music and his puns all the way up, and bantered back and forth with him, providing the necessary distraction.

Even now, he was out buying beer for Jack’s benefit.

Bozer had prepared a really impressive array of snacks for the trip, with the promise of rum babas with lots and lots of rum on their return.

And Jack hadn’t missed how the two young men had carefully avoided talking much about the two young women they now had in their lives in front of Jack, even though Jack was quite sure that both of them were quite far gone over the two young ladies. (Bozer spent a lot of time grinning quite goofily with affectionate eyes at his phone and had even changed the girl’s name to My Computer Goddess in his contacts list. And Jack had met Beth a handful of times, seen her interacting with Mac, seen the softness in his friend’s eyes when he glanced over the fence. Besides, Bozer had told him all about how she’d actually convinced Mac to stay home and rest when he’d had food poisoning a couple of weeks ago over _text message_.)

In fact, they’d been so careful, that Jack didn’t even know the _name_ of Bozer’s Coffee Shop Girl.

They’d really, really tried, and for that, he was very, very grateful.

The night before, when he’d been in the gym punching bags, Patty had gone a few rounds with him to help him burn off some steam, and even squeezed his shoulder in support afterwards.

Even Matty had head-butted him affectionately (at least, he thought it was affectionately, his cat was crazy and behaved contrarily – one moment, she was being all nice and kind, and the next moment, she was scratching him) when he’d left, though he supposed that might also be because he was leaving her in Bozer’s care for a few days, and she loved Bozer.

Jack sighed again, slumping down onto his bed.

He had great friends, he really did.

Still, they couldn’t ease the ache in his heart, not completely.

* * *

There was a knock on the door.

Mac had a key card, obviously.

And even if the kid had forgotten it, he’d have worked out some way to get in on his own anyway, since he probably thought Jack was in the shower.

With a strange feeling (he wasn’t sure if it was happy or sad or both), Jack got up and opened the door.

As he suspected, Sarah stood on the other side.

‘Can I come in?’

He stared at her for a moment, and then nodded and stepped aside, and she stepped into the room.

They stood there, just inside the room, staring at one another, for a few beats.

Eventually, she broke the silence.

‘Thanks, Jack, for coming. And…and for being…for being so good about this. I…I know it can’t have been easy, and I really appreciate it.’

Part of Jack really wanted to be immature at this point.

To tell her that he loved her, still, to implore her to call it off, because couldn’t she see that Jeff was all wrong for her, was just some pale imitation of him, and that it was really _him_ she belonged with?

But he didn’t.

He didn’t know how much of that was true, anyway.

How was he to know the first thing about her relationship with Jeff? They seemed happy, she seemed happy, why should he do anything to ruin that?

He was sure that he loved her, still, and probably always would, a little bit.

But he’d loved Diane, too, really had, still did, a little bit, too.

Mac always said that dating was weird.

Jack was pretty sure that love was just weird.

Besides, he’d had _months_.

Literally, months, since he’d gotten that save-the-date card.

Months to say something, do something.

And he hadn’t, because it hadn’t felt right.

He had to stick to his decision now.

Yes, as he’d told Mac and Bozer, when you found the right one, you didn’t let them go without a fight.

But he’d let Sarah go without a fight years and years ago, never telling her, seriously, truly, how he’d felt.

It had been a mistake.

But he had to live with it now.

‘I…I’m glad you’re happy, Sarah.’

Her eyes were soft and joyous for a moment, and he knew that she really was.

He knew that, just as easily, she could tell that he wasn’t.

There was silence, almost uncomfortable silence, for a moment.

‘I want you to be happy too, Jack.’

Another charged silence.

‘I’ll…I’ll be okay, Sarah. I’ve got Mac, and his best friend Bozer, and my cat Matty, and my training buddy…’

He trailed off. It did sound rather sad, didn’t it? (Even if it wasn’t, even if they really were really so much more to him than it sounded.)

They stared at each other, a silent conversation passing between them.

For a moment, a hint of regret flickered across her eyes, and then it was gone.

Clearly, like him, she’d considered the could-have-beens and the maybes had crossed her mind too.

Maybe kept her awake a few nights, like they had him.

But, like him, she’d come to a decision and chosen a path, and she was going to stick to it.

Unfortunately, unlike him, her path made her much happier and was much easier to walk than his.

Still, if one of them had to suffer, he’d rather he did and not her.

Eventually, Sarah nodded, and gave him a small, awkward, but heartfelt, smile, and made her way back towards the door.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack.’

He waved, swallowing that lump in his throat again.

‘See you, Sarah.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You’re going to knock him dead in your dress, I know it.’

She paused in the doorway and smiled at him again, somewhat more comfortably, somewhat more widely.

‘Thanks, Jack.’

And then she was gone.

* * *

Mac returned a few minutes later, with, true to his word, a lot of beer, and a couple of packets of chips as well.

Jack, by now, had returned to sitting on his bed, rather morose.

‘Jack-‘

‘She came by. We talked.’

Mac nodded slowly, and walked over, took a seat on his own bed facing Jack, and cracked open the cap on a bottle of beer with his Swiss Army knife and handed it to the older man, then opened one for himself.

Jack, meanwhile, chugged down half of his in one go, and then spoke.

‘I…I think I feel a bit better. She’s happy, really is. I got closure. Finality and all.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, she’s always going to be the one who got away, and I’m always going to have my regrets and all, but…’ Jack sighed. ‘It’s…it’s closure. A definite end. I think it’ll make things easier.’

Mac didn’t really know what to say, so he just got up, sat down next to Jack, and put an arm around his shoulders.

Jack returned the gesture, and they clinked their beer bottles together, and drank.

Then, as Mac got up and returned to his own bed (it was easier to hold a conversation that way), Jack shot him a smirk.

‘Now, enough about _me_ , brother.’

Internally, Mac groaned, knowing what was about to happen.

_Well, it’s better than Jack moping._

_And he’s family._

_Not much I won’t do for family._

_Still, doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy this._

‘Bozer tells me that your crazy Rumba-lawnmower went rogue, which I _warned_ you about, brother, in a certain Girl Next Door’s backyard, and somehow, she forgave you and actually thought it was rather cool.’ Jack took another swig of his beer. ‘ _Why_ have you not asked this woman out yet?’

‘Firstly, it’s _Roomba_. The rumba is a dance, and secondly, it’s not exactly an AI or the start of the robot apocalypse, Jack.’ Jack just shot him a look, and Mac sighed and took a healthy drink of his beer, then another. ‘And it’s called taking it slow and waiting for my moment.’

Jack shot him a look.

‘And I’m warning you about taking it _too_ slow and _missing_ your moment, brother.’

With a sigh, Mac nodded, and polished off the rest of his beer in a couple of gulps.

‘It has been more than ten years since I asked a woman out.’

Jack almost did a spit-take.

‘ _Seriously_ , brother?’

Mac nodded.

‘Yes. The last time I asked a girl out, I was asking Darlene Martin to Prom, and she shot me down cold.’ He snorted. ‘She also ignored me for the rest of Junior Year, and all of Senior Year, which made being chem lab partners really hard.’ Jack still looked rather shocked and was opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish, so Mac continued. ‘Neither Penny nor I really did any asking, we just sort of fell together, and Nikki made the first move, and so did Cindy, so…’ Mac sighed and opened another bottle of beer and took a sip. ‘Look, I haven’t got the best track record with women. I’m really not good with women in general. I get excited by weird things-‘

‘And you have found a woman who does too and probably wouldn’t like you half as much if you didn’t.’

Mac sighed again, taking another drink from his beer bottle.

_Unlike about the robot apocalypse, Jack is actually right about that._

‘I…I know, Jack. I know. But I still want to take things slow, make sure she is truly very interested in me too, and I guess…let us fall into something and get halfway there, before I make a move. We live next door to one another; things could get awkward.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And I’m quite sure that she wants the same thing too.’

_As my romantic history proves, we live in a modern world where a woman can make the first move if she wishes._

_Now, my grandfather, being from a different day and age, would probably give me a good talking-to for waiting so long that the lady has to make the first move, but in my defence, at the very least, my relationship with Nikki would never, ever have gotten off the ground if she hadn’t._

_I guess you could say that that might have been a good thing, in hindsight, given how it all ended, but I honestly am glad it did._

_We were happy and in love for quite a few years, after all, and our relationship helped shape me into who I am today._

_Anyway, my point is, Beth hasn’t made a move on me either._

_I’m really quite sure that she’s also very aware that there is something between us._

_Besides, she was sixteen when she finished high school, and she won nine science fairs and didn’t go to Prom either too._

_I have a genius-level IQ, I can read between the lines._

_I’m really quite sure that she is also a fan of taking it slow._

_Particularly since we’re neighbours and friends._

_I don’t want things to get awkward. I’m certain she doesn’t want them to either._

Jack locked eyes with him for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

‘Alright, brother. Just…just don’t wait forever, because this-‘ Jack made a gesture to indicate himself, and then pointed at his and Mac’s suits, hanging in the hotel room’s tiny closet. ‘- is what happens when you do, and trust me, it’s _not_ fun, brother.’ He looked even more serious and spoke softly. ‘I don’t want you to make my mistakes, Mac.’

Mac nodded earnestly.

‘I won’t, Jack, I promise.’

* * *

**CHURCH**

**SAN FRANCISCO**

* * *

As the newly-married couple left the church, Mac turned to Jack, who was watching Sarah and Jeff’s departing backs with no small amount of sadness.

He’d found closure, but he still needed time.

_They say time heals all wounds._

_It’s healed a good deal of mine._

_I hope it’s the same for Jack._

‘Wanna go back to our hotel room and watch _Die Hard?’_

* * *

Later, as the credits rolled and after all the beer had been finished, Jack turned to the young man whom he called his brother.

‘Thanks for coming with me, brother.’

The blonde just smiled back at him.

‘We’re not just friends, Jack. We’re family. Any problem of yours is a problem of mine.’

Jack felt his smile broaden despite himself.

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

The following Saturday morning, Mac paused in his digging and waved at Beth as she came outside with her laundry basket on her hip.

(She hung out her laundry to dry on a clothesline over her deck, because she thought it was honestly wasteful and pointless to use a dryer when they lived in sunny, warm SoCal. Mac agreed wholeheartedly; he and Bozer also hung out their laundry to dry. Besides, UV light was a great anti-bacterial.)

She returned the wave with a smile, and set about pegging her laundry to the line as he kept digging.

He’d prioritized repairing her deck first, which was now all done, and he was now working on the fence.

His automatic lawnmower really had done a number to the fence (it really might be very good at robot fighting, to be honest), necessitating the whole thing to essentially be rebuilt. Hence, he had to dig up the old supports and put in new ones.

At least some of the wood could be reused for the fence, and he could definitely find a use for the rest of it.

It was very physical work, but at least it didn’t require all that much brain power, which allowed his thoughts to drift to other things.

Like the young woman hanging up her washing and her adorable nerdy pyjamas and how she lit up whenever he showed her one of her projects and the lovely smell of the lotion she used to stop her hands from cracking.

Which inevitably, after his mind was done being schmoopy, as Bozer would say, led to his thoughts drifting to Jack and the conversations they’d had at Sarah’s wedding.

He sighed.

Jack had been a little distant in the last couple of days, since they’d gotten back. Sent very short replies to texts, didn’t send him random messages like he usually did from time to time, hadn’t come around to his and Bozer’s for their customary Friday night movie night. He figured that that was probably what his friend needed, some time to process and deal with his feelings on his own, but still, he worried.

Beth finished hanging up her laundry, and with another smile and wave at him, took herself and her basket back inside.

He kept working on the fence.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, she came back outside again, with a pitcher of homemade lemonade and a bowl of grapes. She put them down on the edge of the deck (she didn’t own any outdoor furniture), and then disappeared inside again for a moment, coming out with a bowl of strawberries and two glasses.

She sat down on the edge of the deck.

‘Come have a break, Mac, you’ve been working hard all morning!’

With a smile at her, he put down the shovel, and walked over and sat down. She handed him a glass of lemonade.

‘Thanks, Beth.’

She just smiled back at him as best as she could around her mouthful of strawberry. He took a sip of his lemonade, and then a couple of grapes.

‘What was on your mind, just then?’ Mac quirked an eyebrow at her in response and she continued. ‘You had a thinking sort of look on your face.’

_Huh. Maybe Jack is right about my thinking-face._

He took a strawberry and took his time chewing and swallowing, as she drank some lemonade and took a little bunch of the grapes.

‘The wedding in San Fran that Jack and I just got back from?’ She just nodded, and he continued. ‘That was the wedding of a woman called Sarah. Jack calls her the one that got away. The right one, sometimes.’

He absent-mindedly popped another two grapes in his mouth when he finished speaking.

‘Oh, _ouch._ That must have been terrible for him…’

He simply nodded.

‘It was, but…at least he got closure.’

She nodded in agreement, picking another grape off the bunch she held, and chewing it slowly.

‘You’re a good friend, for going with him and being there for him.’

He smiled wanly at her, then sighed and drank more lemonade.

‘Sometimes, love really hurts.’ She just nodded, a sad look in her eyes that made him quite sure she understood the feeling. He swallowed and took another sip of lemonade, and then took a deep breath and spoke. ‘I had a girlfriend that I met at MIT. Her name was Nikki and she was three years older than I was. We were together from when I was sixteen until I was twenty-one.’ He sighed and took another deep breath, looking down. ‘She met someone else and cheated on me while I was deployed.’ He paused again for a moment, and she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He gave her a wan little smile, which faded as he continued, looking down again. ‘She didn’t tell me, just…just left me the day I got home. Had her bags all packed and everything.’

He looked down, then back over at Beth. The hand that wasn’t on his shoulder was over her mouth, and her eyes seemed simultaneously horrified and saddened.

‘I’m…I’m so sorry, Mac. That’s…that’s a terrible thing to do to _anyone_ , let alone you!’

He shrugged, putting down his lemonade glass and looking away into the distance.

‘It was almost four years ago.’

She shook her head and squeezed his shoulder.

‘Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.’ He turned back to face her and gave her a wan smile in thanks, and she hesitated a moment before continuing. ‘I really want to give you a hug. Can I give you a hug?’

His smile widened a little and he held up his arms, and she scooted over and hugged him.

‘Thanks, Beth.’

‘Oxytocin is a wonderful thing.’

He gave a little chuckle.

‘Yeah, it is.’

They let go of each other and she picked up another grape and ate it, before continuing. He picked up his lemonade again as she spoke.

‘I’m not saying that anything Nikki did was right, because it wasn’t…but distance is tough.’ She sighed and looked down at her hands. ‘I had a boyfriend, all through medical school. Thought he was the one, if there’s such a thing. We ended up doing residencies at hospitals just two hours apart, and…well, our relationship just fell apart.’ Her expression became more wry as she looked back up at him. ‘And I once dated a guy who insisted that the Periodic Table was wrong, because lithium can’t possibly be lighter than oxygen.’ He winced in sympathy and her wry smile grew a little. ‘It’s nowhere near the same scale as betrayal that you went through, but I guess I’m saying I sort-of understand.’

He shook his head with a smile (you apparently didn’t become an ER doctor without developing a fairly dark or inappropriate sense of humour, not unlike the sense of humour a good number of soldiers developed to cope), and took another strawberry as she continued.

‘Still, love doesn’t always hurt. In fact, I think a lot of the time, it’s quite healing, actually. Pleasant.’ Her eyes widened as their gazes met and she bit her lip, cheeks pinking. ‘I mean, you’ve got great friends, like Jack and Bozer, and I’ve got great friends at Huntington and…’

She trailed off, cheeks still flushed, and he swallowed the strawberry and replied.

‘I know. Love’s a great thing.’ They stared at each other for a couple more beats, and he was pretty sure that his ears had turned red by now. Mac then downed the rest of his lemonade and stood. ‘I…I should go back to fixing the fence.’ He smiled. ‘Thanks for the fruit and the lemonade, Beth.’

She smiled back at him.

‘You’re always welcome, Mac.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, how I wish Sarah’s wedding had gone. I really kind of wanted to slap Jack for a while at the start of that episode, and I do wish there’d been a bit more *emotional* stuff between him and Mac about it, but given everything else that went down in Screwdriver…well, it did kind of have to get pushed to the side.
> 
> On the brighter side – yes, even more rom-com tropes. I think I gave most of them to Mac and Beth, who, being quite weird and rather stubborn, don’t actually do what you’d expect a couple in a rom-com to do, methinks. (I don’t know, I feel like if it was an actual rom-com, they’d have ended up making out in her bathroom when he was injured by his Roomba-lawnmower…)
> 
> According to my chemistry lecturer, cis-platin (a leading anti-cancer drug, it was used to treat Lance Armstrong, for example) was accidentally discovered by a guy who was trying to study the effect of electric currents on bacteria. He used a growth medium containing ammonium chloride and ‘inert’ platinum electrodes, nothing happened, so he turned up the voltage, and accidentally oxidised the platinum metal to platinum(II), and produced cis-platin as a result.


	7. October 2017

**OCTOBER 2017**

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Bozer put a large plate of waffles down in front of Mac, who smiled up at his best friend.

‘Thanks, man.’

Bozer grinned right back at him, and sat down and dug into his own plate of waffles.

‘So, what’s your plan for this fine Saturday?’

‘I’m going to finish the fence.’

Bozer looked sceptically at him.

‘You’ve taken _ages_ to finish that fence. You could have done the whole thing in like half of the time. You’re just drawing it out so you have an excuse to keep seeing Beth all the time…seriously, bro, just go ask her out already!’

_To be fair to Bozer, I **could** have finished the fence quite a while ago._

_But I’m **not** deliberately drawing it out, I promise. I’m not pulling a Penelope and undoing all of my work in the middle of the night or anything like that. _

_That would not be fair to Beth, because she still doesn’t have a fence. Not a whole one, anyway._

_Though, I guess she really doesn’t seem to mind that I’m not done yet…_

_Look, whenever I end up working on it, which is always when she’s home – and not because of what you’re thinking; I just think it’s a bit creepy to be in her yard when she isn’t home, that’s all - we inevitably end up talking, and half the time, that leads to a distraction that pulls me away from working on the fence._

_Say, last weekend, we ended up discussing how to get rid of the grass stains on my pants, and then we wound up in mine and Bozer’s kitchen doing stain removal experiments, and not much fence-repair was achieved._

_Though, we did come up with an excellent general-purpose stain remover. Grease, grass stains, wine, chocolate, pasta sauce…it gets rid of everything, without any of that scrubbing or soaking or dab-this-paste-here nonsense._

_It’s great; we’ve both put it in our laundry detergent!_

_And for the record, despite what Bozer told Jack and Penny, it did **not** involve me being pants-less in her presence at all._

_It was fun, intellectually stimulating and useful._

_A great way to spend a Saturday afternoon._

_Especially with a beautiful and intelligent woman._

_Especially with **this** beautiful and intelligent woman, if I’m honest._

_Yeah, I really should listen to Bozer. And Jack. And Penny._

Mac just shook his head, taking his time chewing his mouthful of waffle.

‘ _You_ are the one with a standing Saturday sort-of date.’

Sort-of date was apparently the word that Bozer and Riley used to describe what they did on Saturdays at the coffee shop.

From what Mac had heard, sort-of date was a very good way of describing it.

(He still hadn’t actually met Riley yet, she and Bozer weren’t at the introduce-one-another-to-our-respective-friends stage yet, apparently.)

Bozer just indicated Mac with his fork. (The threatening effect was kind of ruined by the large piece of waffle speared on it.)

‘People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, bro.’

_He might have a point._

_Might._

* * *

**BETH’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Mac, standing on Beth’s side of the fence, nailed the final paling into place. The young woman, with an empty laundry basket on her hip, standing next to him, smiled up at him.

‘All done?’

He nodded.

‘All done.’

‘Thank you, Mac.’

He shook his head wryly.

‘It _is_ my fault you needed a new fence in the first place, and I _did_ promise to fix it for you…’

She nodded, her smile widening.

‘And you do always keep your promises.’ She started walking back into her house, and he picked up his tools and fell into step with her. (It wasn’t as if he could get back to his own place through the yard anymore now.) ‘Anyway, would you like some pumpkin pie? I put it in the oven about forty minutes ago, it should be done in a few minutes.’

His brow furrowed.

_She’s making pumpkin pie? It’s currently the middle of October._

He shot her a teasing little grin.

‘I think you’re mixing up your holidays, Beth. Thanksgiving’s not for another six weeks.’

She narrowed her eyes at him and jabbed at his chest with her pointer finger.

‘Firstly, pumpkin pie is _amazing_ and hence should be a perfectly acceptable foodstuff all year round. Secondly, it’s a _spooky_ pumpkin pie for Halloween. I’m practicing!’

His grin widened.

‘Spooky pie? I’ve got to see that.’

* * *

A few minutes later, leaning against her kitchen bench, Mac laughed as she pulled the pie, decorated with meringue ghosts, out of the oven.

‘Oh, _very_ spooky!’

She put the pie down, pulled off her oven mitts, and then poked him in the sternum.

‘Mock it again, and no pie for you!’

He raised his hands in the air in supplication.

‘Woah, not mocking!’ He grinned down at her. ‘Besides, that’d be cruel and unusual punishment.’

She pretended to think for a moment, and then stepped away and pulled out two plates, two spoons and a knife from the dishwasher.

‘I guess that _is_ against my ethical code as a doctor…’

* * *

**BOZER AND RILEY’S FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

‘…You know _way_ too much about serial killers.’

Riley looked up from Bozer’s latest movie script, which she’d been reading. It was about teenage versions of his best friend and him trying to stop a serial killer that had heavy similarities to the Zodiac Killer from killing teens on dates in their hometown of Mission City. It was apparently inspired by a nightmare and was kind of _Nancy Drew_ meets _CSI_ and _Criminal Minds_ with a hint of _Scooby Doo_ thrown in. (A dog called Archimedes, apparently based off Mac’s beloved childhood pet, featured.)

‘I have watched every serial killer movie and documentary ever made.’ At her raised eyebrow, he continued, raising his hands into the air. ‘Hey, it was research!’ She kept looking at him. ‘Oh, well, also, you know, be prepared and all.’

Riley snorted.

‘Well, your best friend always carries a Swiss Army knife and can apparently fix anything with some paperclips and duct tape. Guess his Boy Scout-ness must have rubbed off on you.’ Then she scoffed. ‘But based off your stories, you two got into a hell of a lot of mischief, and he seems to have been the instigator, so maybe not all that Boy Scout…’

Bozer shook his head with a chuckle.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Then he smirked. ‘Have I told you about how he made lightning indoors?’

Riley just gave an answering grin. Bozer’s stories never failed to bring a smile to her face. He _did_ have a talent for storytelling.

‘No, not yet.’

He leaned forward.

‘Well, it was a dark and stormy night…’

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

_You know how I’ve been saying that I’m waiting for the right moment to ask Beth out?_

_Well, it turns out that the right moment was a random Tuesday at 5:45 in the evening, after I’d gotten home from what was really a rather normal workday._

* * *

Mac stepped inside his house, and put his keys down in the bowl on the table next to the door, absent-mindedly picking up a paperclip from the table and shaping it into something.

He walked into the living room, and had barely sat down on the couch when he realized what he’d made.

A pie.

_She really, really loves pie._

He stared at it for a moment, a soft smile on his face.

_And then, it hit me._

He really had no idea what came over him.

He got up from the couch, grabbed his favourite leather jacket that he’d removed only moments earlier from the coat hook, and jammed on his shoes again, and walked next door.

The lights were on at her place, so he rang the doorbell.

A moment later, Beth answered the door, hair tied into a ponytail and wearing jeans and a striped long-sleeved shirt, with an apron emblazoned with _My other PPE is a labcoat_ on. She smiled at him, a little confused. (He didn’t look visibly injured and he texted her with a warning now if one of his projects had a chance of overflowing into her yard, had ever since the Roomba-lawnmower.)

‘Hi, Mac-’

He just blurted out the first words that came into his head.

‘Beth, would you like to have dinner with me?’

She was still, a little surprised, for a second, and then looked up at him with a smile that slowly grew into a grin.

‘I would love to, Mac.’ They both grinned somewhat goofily at one another for a moment. ‘When were you thinking?’

He smirked.

‘Well, there’s no time like the present.’

_I’ve already been very spontaneous, a little more can’t hurt._

_Besides, spontaneity is apparently very romantic, and I’m really an on-the-fly sort of guy. I make a lot of things up as I go along._

She quirked an eyebrow at him, but her broad smile didn’t fade.

‘ _I_ have tomorrow off, but don’t _you_ have work?’

He shrugged with a sly look on his face.

‘The night’s still young, and I _do_ like to live on the edge.’

She chuckled, shooting him a teasing look.

‘Going out on a date on a work night. _Very_ rebellious. You are _such_ a bad boy.’ She raised her eyebrow again. ‘I guess you _do_ wear a leather jacket.’ He laughed, and she nodded with a smile. ‘Give me half an hour to finish putting my stew in the crock pot and get changed?’

‘You look fine, more than fine, as you are.’

His ears reddened – apparently his brain was on vacation today – and she shook her head, smile widening, and cheeks a bit pink.

‘Thank you very much, but I really can do much better than jeans and a T-shirt.’

He smiled back at her.

‘I look forward to seeing what you can do. I’ll go find a restaurant. Any preferences?’

She thought for just a second.

‘Nowhere pretentious or fancy, but I like pretty much all typical foodstuffs.’

He nodded, still smiling rather goofily. (Though, she was no better.)

‘I’ll pick you up here, in T minus 30 minutes!’

She laughed, shaking her head as he headed back into his house.

‘I thought you worked at JPL, not Mission Control!’

* * *

_I have no idea where I got this squeaky-clean Boy Scout image I seem to have from._

_I got kicked out from the Boy Scouts after six months._

_And I used to regularly break into my school after hours to do experiments._

_And I might have ended up in trouble with the police a couple of times._

_And there’s the Football Field Incident…_

_So, let’s just say, that I really can be a bit rebellious, a bit of a bad boy, on occasion._

_Like tonight._

_According to my grandfather, one should always walk a lady up to her front door after a date, and kiss her goodnight._

_What kind of kiss depends on the date, and the lady in question, but he firmly insisted that it was **not** gentlemanly to kiss a lady on the lips on a first date._

_Sorry, Grandfather, but I did it anyway._

_Said lady, in my defence, was a very willing and enthusiastic participant._

_Still, definitely not Boy Scout, right?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, they finally got there! My personal favourite bit of this chapter is Mac’s little spiel at the end. :)
> 
> Next chapter – we check in on Bozer and Riley. Something big is about to happen in their relationship too! Can you guess what it is?


	8. December 2017

**DECEMBER 2017**

**ARCADE**

**LA**

* * *

‘…Woah, seriously, I knew you were queen of computers, I did _not_ know that you were also Guitar Hero queen!’

Riley gave a snort of laughter, and smiled at Bozer, reaching out to take his hand as they left the Guitar Hero machine to walk around the arcade that they were spending their Saturday morning in, trying to decide what to play next.

‘You’ve got great DDR skills yourself.’

He grinned.

‘Thanks!’ He hesitated for a moment, and stopped walking in front of a Whack-a-Mole machine. ‘Riley…would you like to come celebrate Christmas with me and Mac? I mean, because we’re friends, good friends and all, not because we’re also…more-than-friends.’ That was the label they’d decided to use for their relationship, as it was somewhere in between friends and boyfriend/girlfriend. ‘Me and Mac, we always have our close friends over for dinner on Christmas Eve, so it’s going to be us, the old man, Mac’s girlfriend, our mutual ex-girlfriend Penny…and your mom’s invited too, of course.’

Riley had yet to meet any of Bozer’s friends, and Bozer had yet to meet her mom.

They weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend, not yet, anyway.

It wasn’t time for meet-the-family yet.

But then again, they both thought, friends, good friends, spent Christmas together (especially if one didn’t have anyone else to spend Christmas with, which Bozer was really quite sure was Riley and her mom’s situation – and he wasn’t really wrong), and friends, good friends, met each other’s friends and family.

Riley nodded slowly, a small, soft smile growing slowly on her face. She squeezed Bozer’s hand in her own.

‘I…we’d like that.’ She squeezed his hand again. ‘Thanks, Bozer.’

He smiled that same smile back at her.

‘Wanna play Whack-a-Mole?’ Riley quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘Hey, it’s fun! That’s all that matters, right?’

She shook her head, but she was smiling.

‘Alright, let’s play Whack-a-Mole.’

* * *

**BOZER AND RILEY’S FAVOURITE COFFEE SHOP**

**LA**

* * *

Riley stared down into her coffee for a moment as Bozer told her about the origins of the tradition of eating pastrami for Christmas that he and Mac had. Apparently, their first Christmas together, back in Mission City, Bozer had forgotten to order a turkey, and brisket had been all the butcher had left.

She looked up as he finished his story, and his face fell, growing concerned, when he saw she wasn’t laughing or even smiling. He held his hand out to her over the table.

Riley sighed, and reached out to take his hand, still staring at the table top, unable to meet his eyes.

‘Me and my mom…we don’t really celebrate Christmas. For us, December 25th’s just another day.’ She sighed again, and he squeezed her hand in comfort.  ‘With my dad…and how tight money was….well, Christmas was never really that magical time of year for me. My mom tried, but…’ She still hadn’t told him about Jack, but now, she felt like finally doing it. Maybe it was past time she mentioned him. ‘Best Christmas I’ve ever had was probably when I was fourteen. When…when I was twelve, my mom got together with this guy. His name was Jack, and he was in the Army. That was the only Christmas he was home for.’ She shook her head, almost fondly, lost in a memory. ‘I…I thought I was too old to need a father when he and my mom got together. Thought I didn’t need one, because I had my mom, and she was amazing…but he tried so hard to get me to open up and trust him.’ She took a sip of her coffee absent-mindedly. ‘He’s…he’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father, I guess.’ She snorted, her face falling. ‘Then…when I was fifteen, he threw my dad around to stop him from hurting my mom, and right after that… he walked out on us and I haven’t seen him since.’

There was anger in her tone, but also sadness.

She did miss him, still, sometimes, and she was sure her mom did too, sometimes.

She could track him down, she supposed, but something still stopped her.

(Still, even though connecting with Bozer, for some reason, seemed to make her feel more open to reconciliation, though she really didn’t know why.)

(Maybe it was helping with the whole emotional walls thing. Maybe the feelings that she was developing for Bozer were reminding her of how they’d been _family_ for that short time.)

(A little voice in her head whispered that there were similarities between all kinds of love, after all.)

A little pride, maybe, or that anger. The hurt that she still felt, certainly.

Riley sighed again, squeezing Bozer’s hand one last time, then letting go and looking up at him.

* * *

Riley hadn’t noticed the array of emotions and shock and realization that flickered across Bozer’s face as she’d told her story, so distracted and lost in her own thoughts and feelings she was.

Jack had had a girlfriend called Diane with a daughter called Riley, who was the same age as Bozer’s Riley and also liked computers, as far as he and Mac knew. He and Diane had broken up years ago and he hadn’t seen either of them since.

Bozer’s Riley’s mother’s name was Diane, and Diane, Bozer had just learned, had an ex-boyfriend called Jack who was in the Army and had walked out on them.

Jack’s Riley and Bozer’s Riley were one and the same.

He and Mac had always thought that it was a funny and odd coincidence that both Jack’s Riley and Bozer’s Riley were about the same age and had a mom called Diane and were good with computers.

But, since Jack had never mentioned their surname, since Jack had never told him _why_ he and Diane had broken up, since he rarely spoke about them, since Riley had never mentioned Jack until now…he’d never connected the dots.

Since Bozer didn’t use Riley’s name around Jack and didn’t mention her very much at all, since Bozer mostly told her stories about his and Mac’s childhood adventures or the ridiculous things his roomie did, since Jack was a very common name and Bozer usually called him old man anyway… _no-one_ had connected the dots.

No-one had realized that Jack’s ex-girlfriend was Diane Davis, and the Riley he spoke about, only very occasionally, like a lost daughter, in a way, much like the way he spoke about Mac, was Riley Davis, Bozer’s Coffee Shop Girl and almost-girlfriend.

Bozer was suddenly irrationally grateful about that.

He shook himself out of his shock, looking at Riley sad and determined all at once when she looked up at him.

He got up and crouched down in front of her chair, putting his hands on her upper arms.

‘Riley, baby, I’m going to put the magic back into Christmas for you, and your mom. I’m going to give you a Christmas miracle!’

Riley smiled gently at him, but she shook her head.

‘Thank you, Bozer, but…’

He put a finger on her lips.

‘No buts. I’m no Mac, but I’m going to do it, just you wait and see!’

His brain was ticking into overdrive, coming up with a crazy plan truly worthy of his best friend.

She might hate him after this, but he really did want to do this for her.

She’d sounded _sad_ , not just angry, as if she did really miss Jack too, but something prevented her from reaching out to him.

And Bozer knew Jack missed Riley and Diane.

He knew that Jack believed that Sarah was the right one, and that Jack really did love her, and maybe always would, a little bit, but it was as plain as day that Jack had truly loved Diane, too, and maybe still did love her, and Riley, too.

He’d always had a shipper heart.

It was going to be Christmas soon.

Bozer believed in Christmas miracles.

Thanks to spending more than half his life with Mac, he also believed that one could pull off miracles.

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

At about 5 pm, Bozer walked into his and Mac’s place, still lost in thought.

He made his way into the living room, where his best friend was working on something that looked like a dress made out of a potato sack, some paperclips and duct tape, with a turkey baster in hand.

The blonde looked up at him when he entered, and when Bozer quirked an eyebrow at him, fairly half-heartedly, indicating the potato sack dress, Mac gave a soft, slightly-sheepish, slightly-sly grin.

‘It’s an inside joke with Beth.’ Mac’s expression instantly changed to concerned when his best friend didn’t really react, didn’t start teasing him or inquiring _where in the world do you even buy a potato sack, bro?._ ‘Bozer…is everything okay with Riley?’

Bozer flopped down onto the couch, and after a moment, Mac sat down next to him.

‘Yeah, bro, things are more than okay with her…but…Mac, she’s _Jack’s_ Riley. Jack’s ex-girlfriend is Diane Davis, and my Riley and Jack’s Riley? They’re one and the same.’

The blonde stared at him for a moment.

‘We _really_ should have worked that out earlier.’

Bozer snorted.

‘Yeah, bro, yeah.’ Bozer sighed. ‘Jack…Jack walked out on them. He threw Riley’s dad around to keep him from hurting her mom, and then he just walked out on them. Literally. Riley never saw him again.’ His voice grew softer. ‘She says that he was the closest thing she ever had to a father, and then he _left_.’

Mac spoke hesitantly, shifting slightly on the couch.

‘Jack’s…Jack’s a good man. One of the best men I know. He wouldn’t have done something like that without a really good reason…’

Bozer nodded.

‘Yeah, I know. Jack’s great.’ He sighed again. ‘But I’m still a little pissed at him.’ He snorted. ‘But not as much as Riley is.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Even though I’m sure she still misses him.’

Mac shifted awkwardly on the couch again, reaching out and picking up a paperclip and fiddling with it absent-mindedly. It started to take the shape of a bridge.

‘I…I think you have a right to be pissed at him, both of you. Riley more than you, of course. And…I think it’s normal for her to miss him too…and maybe, since she does, and we know Jack misses her and her mom, too…’

Bozer reached out and put his arm around Mac’s shoulders.

‘Great minds think alike, bro.’ Mac nodded with a very small, very wan smile, and put his arm around Bozer’s shoulders in return. ‘I’m going to head to Jack’s place; I think we need to talk.’

Mac nodded again and squeezed his arm around Bozer’s shoulders in support.

‘Do you want me to come with?’

Bozer shook his head.

‘Nah, this is something I’ve got to do alone, bro. But thanks.’ He let go of Mac and shot him a look as he got up and walked back towards the door, picking up his keys along the way. ‘Besides, don’t you and Beth have plans tonight?’

Mac nodded, but shrugged.

‘She’d understand.’

Bozer gave him a small smile, and left.

* * *

_She really would understand._

_Though, and maybe it’s not the nicest thing to think, given the whole situation Jack and Bozer and Riley are in now, I am glad that I don’t have to cancel my plans for tonight._

_A night in with my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend, her great cooking and plenty of IKEA furniture to assemble?_

_What more could I want?_

Beth’s home had previously been rather sparsely furnished, with a collection of old and worn and mismatched furniture leftover from her college dorm and the share houses she’d lived in during medical school and her residency.

She’d decided, that after six months of having a proper job and being a proper adult, in her words, that it was time to get herself some new furniture.

Hence, she’d sold, donated or given away pretty much all of her old furniture (Mac had her old coffee table now; he had plans for it), and they’d gone on a trip to IKEA two days ago after work. (Beth had mentioned that she was going to IKEA, and when his eyes had lit up – he really did love IKEA; it was very awesome what they managed to flat-pack – invited him along and they’d made a date of it.)

_Yes, IKEA is a weird place to go on a date._

_Dating, however, is weird._

_Honestly, **we** are also weird._

_Besides, I maintain that while it’s not a diner or a drive-in, furniture shopping in IKEA is no worse than doing an escape room or seeing a movie in a cemetery in terms of romance._

_And we had fun._

Now, her home was full of boxes of flat-pack furniture that really needed to be assembled.

_I am very, very good at assembling IKEA furniture._

_And I really, really enjoy it. I don’t know **why** , exactly, but I do. _

_Besides, I think that assembling your girlfriend’s furniture is one of those boyfriend jobs._

_Might as well make a date night of it, right?_

Mac smiled to himself as he put down the turkey baster (trying to incorporate that into the potato sack dress was proving difficult – he’d have to continue this later), and walked to the doorway, picking up his favourite leather jacket on the way, and headed next door.

* * *

**JACK’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Jack was sitting at home on Saturday evening, drinking a beer and watching TV with a heat pack on his knee (it was sore; it ached more when the weather turned colder), with Matty on top of the heat pack, stealing the heat and occasionally digging her claws into his leg, when the doorbell rang.

‘Coming!’

He got up, slowly, displacing Matty, who yowled at him (he was going to get it from her later), and made his way over to the door and opened it.

Bozer stood on the other side, looking rather antsy. He straightened up and squared his shoulders, taking a deep breath, once Jack had finished opening the door.

‘My Coffee Shop Girl’s name is Riley Davis.’

All the colour drained out of Jack’s face.

He moved aside to let Bozer in.

‘You’d better come sit down.’

* * *

Jack listened as Bozer told him about meeting Riley in the coffee shop, explained how no-one had connected all the dots until now, all thinking that it was just such a coincidence that Bozer’s Riley and Jack’s Riley shared the same name, and both had mothers called Diane, were about the same age and were both good with computers.

In hindsight, someone (Jack personally thought Mac, really, with his genius brain, even if he had been distracted with his budding romance with his now-girlfriend lately) should have worked this out earlier.

Bozer sighed and leaned back a little in his seat as he finished the story.

‘I’m a little pissed at you, man. Look, you’re my friend, Mac calls you family, and any family of his is mine too, and you watched his back when I couldn’t and saved his life a few times. But I’m still pissed at you, but nowhere near as pissed as she is.’ Jack just nodded silently and there was silence for a while, which Bozer broke, his voice soft and a bit hesitant, but firm. ‘Why’d you do it?’

Jack sighed, seizing his now-warm beer and downing the whole lot. He glanced at Bozer, and then down, reaching out absent-mindedly to scratch between Matty’s ears. She dug her claws gently into his arm in response.

‘I…I was no better than her dad, Bozer.’ Matty clawed at him, as if urging him to continue. ‘I beat him up. I used violence. Pretty extreme violence.’ His voice softened and hoarsened. ‘And…and Riley and Diane…they…they looked _horrified_ , man.’ His voice cracked. ‘I…I realized what I’d done, how I’d become just like _him…_ and I couldn’t bear to see them look at me like that…so I left.’

They sat there in silence for a while. Matty yowled at Jack and dug her claws into him again, as if admonishing him.

Eventually, Bozer broke it.

‘Remember how I met Mac?’ Jack just nodded. ‘Yeah, well I know that breaking Donnie Sandoz’s nose might not have been the right thing to do, violence never solves anything and begets only violence and all…but he was beating up Mac, and I had to do _something…_ and I reckon that in the end, it was a good thing to do. Maybe even the right thing.’ Bozer shrugged. ‘Stopped him from beating up Mac, at least for a while.’

Jack considered for a moment, and Bozer continued, sensing that he was getting through to the older man.

‘And…and I’m not sure if you read the room correctly, Jack. Riley…Riley’s pissed at you, yeah, and I bet her mom is too, but I don’t think she’s _scared_ of you. I don’t think you horrified her at all.’ Jack looked up at Bozer, met his eyes. Bozer continued, his voice soft. ‘She…she says you’re the closest thing she’s ever had to a father, and I think she’s pissed at you because you left her and her mom, because you were kind of her dad, like you’re kind of Mac’s.’

Jack blinked at the sudden tears in his eyes. Matty scratched him as if to say _I told you so, you idiot._

His voice was hoarse and rough and soft with emotion when he responded.

‘She really said that?’

Bozer just nodded.

‘Yeah, she really said that.’

There was silence again. Jack reached up and wiped his eyes.

‘I…I really messed up, didn’t I?’ He gave a rather bitter snort of laughter. ‘I always mess up.’

Bozer hesitantly reached out and socked him lightly on the arm.

‘Hey, you haven’t messed up with me and Mac yet.’ Jack gave him a wan smile, and the younger man continued. ‘And maybe it’s not too late. I’ve got a plan, and I’m no Mac, but I reckon it ain’t half bad…’

* * *

Later that night, Jack reached out and hugged Bozer as the younger man stood at the door.

‘Thanks, Bozer. Thanks.’

Bozer clapped him on the back and smiled.

‘We’re probably going to get slapped for this, and she might end up hating both of us…’

‘It’s nearly Christmas. Maybe we’ll get a miracle.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -  
> I headcanon that Mac loves IKEA, and attempt to feature that headcanon as much as possible. Ergo, two IKEA-based dates for him and Beth.
> 
> And this might be because I do ship Bozer/Riley quite strongly (I don’t think they’re a really big ship, from what I’ve heard, quite a lot of people aren’t sold on them yet), but I was really, really hoping that in Scissors, Bozer would find a way to pull off some sort of Christmas miracle for Riley; I know she (and the world, really) got one courtesy of Mac (and her and Jack, too – they were integral to the ‘move the Earth’ thing), and Mac is amazing and all, but still…Hence, this is the second time I’ve had Bozer try and pull off a Christmas miracle for Riley.


	9. December 23rd 2017

**DECEMBER 23 rd 2017**

**BOZER’S FRIEND’S RESTAURANT**

**LA**

* * *

Riley smiled at Bozer as he opened the door to the little private room in the restaurant (he’d apparently called in a favour from a friend who used to work the line with him and had made it big and opened his own restaurant) for her and her mom.

He really had pulled off some sort of Christmas miracle, showing the two Davis women the magic of Christmas.

He’d met them at her place in the morning with Thermoses full of homemade hot chocolate and an early Christmas present for each of them – an ugly Christmas sweater, thin enough to wear in sunny LA in the winter, as well as a large bag of supplies for making gingerbread.

They’d made a gingerbread house together, the three of them, just like the ones that were on display in shop windows. Then they’d watched _Home Alone_ (Bozer insisted that it was a Christmas movie and that Kevin kind of reminded him, just a little bit, of Mac, because of all the booby traps), and after that, they’d gone ice-skating under Christmas lights.

It really wasn’t what they’d actually done, it was the _thought_ that he’d put into it.

How much effort he’d gone to, putting the whole thing together.

The fact that he’d invited her mom too, included her in his plans without any question at all, seemed to genuinely relish having her along.

Her mom really approved of Bozer. Riley didn’t need to sit down and ask her to know; she could just see it.

She’d known for a long time now (a really long time now) that he really wasn’t a creep, really wasn’t doing all of these nice things just because she was a pretty girl.

But this, if she’d had any doubts left, would have blown them all away.

So, once they were all in the room, she reached out and hugged him tightly, and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Thanks, Bozer. Thanks so much.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I…I think I believe in the magic of Christmas again.’

He hugged her back tightly.

‘I’m really glad you do. No-one should miss out on the magic of Christmas!’ He let go of her and stepped away. Riley’s brow furrowed when she saw the look on his face. Happy, affectionate, maybe _loving_ , but hesitant, a little sad almost, too. She opened her mouth to say something, but he continued before she could say a word. ‘Now, you might hate me after this, but…here’s your Christmas miracle.’

The door opened.

In stepped a man that Riley hadn’t seen for ten years. Her mom actually gasped in shock.

Jack.

(A little voice in the back of her head gasped in realization, as the pieces fell into place. The Jack that Bozer usually called old man, Mac’s friend, the man who was almost his older brother, or even a father, was _her_ Jack.)

Looking sheepish and hesitant and almost scared.

He raised a hand and waved, a very awkward grin on his face.

‘Hi, Diane. Hi, Riley. Long time, no see.’

As Riley and Diane stared at him, Bozer just slipped out the door.

There was a long silence as the three of them stared at one another.

Eventually, Jack broke it, looking very serious.

‘I’m sorry. I really, really am.’

The mother and daughter glanced at one another, then sat down, Diane putting an arm around her daughter, who was still staring at Jack, her eyes a maelstrom of emotions, and kissing her forehead gently.

In many ways, Jack’s departure from their lives had hurt Riley so much more than Diane, even if he’d been Diane’s boyfriend.

Riley had been younger, and Jack had been like a father to her. Riley was, in general, slow to trust and slow to open up, but once she did, you were like family to her. Meant the world to her. It wasn’t all that long after she’d told her mom that Jack really was like a father to her, given him, in her own way, her blessing, that Jack had left.

And that had hurt Riley so, so much.

Jack, too, took a seat opposite the Davis women.

‘I…’

He really didn’t know what to say.

Riley looked up at him, pinned him with a stare that was part-anger, part-heartbreak and part-genuine curiosity.

‘Why’d you leave?’

Jack sighed and took a deep breath, looking away, and then back at Riley and Diane.

‘I…I threw your dad around. Beat him up pretty bad, tossed him out.’ He looked down, and then back up at them again. ‘And then…I saw…you…you both looked so _horrified…_ and well, I was no better than him, really, so…’

Riley and Diane stared at him for a moment.

It was Diane who broke the silence.

‘Jack Dalton, you are a very stupid man.’ Her tone was almost one of exasperated affection. ‘Did you ever stop and _think_ about why we might have been horrified?’

‘You threw my dad around to stop him from hurting my mom, Jack. You protected us.’

Diane squeezed her daughter’s shoulders a little tighter, then looked up at Jack and nodded.

‘My ex is an asshole, Jack. A real asshole. A possessive asshole who doesn’t know the meaning of _no, leave me alone, we are over and I’m going to call the police._ What if he’d gone after _you_?’

Sure, Jack was ex-Delta Force. Had been Delta Force, back then. He could definitely handle himself. That hadn’t stopped them from being concerned, more than concerned. Ambushes happened, lucky blows, or even lucky shots…

Jack stared at his ex-girlfriend, eyes wide and suddenly very regretful, and then glanced at Riley, who just gave a little nod. He bit his lip and spoke.

‘This is why those shrinks on TV are always talking about the importance of communication, isn’t it?’ Both women snorted. ‘I…I really messed up.’ Riley and Diane both nodded, and Jack looked down for a beat, then back at them. ‘I never thought I was a good enough man for the two of you.’

Both Davis women shook their heads. Diane spoke first, gracing him with a small smile.

‘Jack, I trusted you to watch my daughter, my baby girl, who means everything to me. I trusted you to look after her, because I knew you were a good, good man, maybe the best I’ve ever met, and you’d _proven_ that to me. You’re more than good enough, always have been.’

Their eyes met over Riley’s head, a weighty _look_ passing between them. Jack gave her a soft little smile, which she returned.

Riley, too, spoke up.

‘You…you were the closest thing to a dad I’ve ever had, Jack. And…and you were a pretty good one too.’

Jack was suddenly very tempted to reach out and ruffle her hair, but didn’t. She’d hate that. Always had, just like Mac did.

Instead, he took a deep breath and gave both women a wan smile.

‘We’ve got a lot to work through.’

They both nodded, and Riley pulled out her phone, which had just beeped with a text message.

‘Well, Bozer says we’ve got the room until ten. Apparently, we’re also getting dinner, courtesy of him.’

The affection in her tone, and the softness in her eyes as she read his text message did not go unnoticed by either Jack or Diane, who just exchanged a fond smile, their eyes meeting.

Neither of them missed the look in the other’s eyes, that weightiness, that softness and maybe the hope, the feelings that had never really quite completely gone away, no matter what either of them had thought, either. It was Diane who spoke.

‘We’ve got time.’

Jack nodded.

‘I…I’ve got no intentions of just walking out of your lives again.’

Diane tilted her head slightly to the right, her eyes meeting his again.

‘We wouldn’t let you.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Jack and Bozer were wrong about the being slapped bit…I guess the reconciliation was rather anti-climactic, in a way, but I’m pretty happy with it, so…


	10. Christmas Eve 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random thought – I just stumbled upon the fact that in Large Blade, Mac said that according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy of any system will _decrease_ over time, which is actually the opposite of the actual Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is that it will _increase_ over time…and now it is really annoying me. #chem major problems
> 
> Anyway, on with the story!

 

**CHRISTMAS EVE**

**JACK’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

Jack stared at Matty, locked in a staring contest with his cat, as he ate his breakfast cereal. As usual, he blinked first and she meowed victoriously at him.

He sighed.

He hadn’t missed the fact that there was still something of a sort between him and Diane. Some spark. Some feelings that not even everything that had passed between them; him leaving, Sarah, ten years of no contact, could get rid of.

He’d let Sarah go. He really had. He’d had closure, she’d moved on, and he had too.

She’d always have a special place in his heart, but then again, Diane had too, all these years, even when he’d been pining for the woman that he called the right one, the one that got away.

Maybe he’d been wrong about that.

Maybe there was more than one right one.

Mac had gone on about something like that the other day, supported by Bozer.

Multiverse theory or something like that.

Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Some idea about how there were an infinite number of Bizzaro universes out there, where everything was just that little bit different.

He thought back to what he’d told Mac and Bozer, made the two younger men promise. When you found the right one, you didn’t let her go without a fight.

He hadn’t put up much of a fight, ten years ago.

Just left, hadn’t stopped to think and ask and talk to them.

Riley and Diane had forgiven him.

The hurt he’d inflicted would take some time to heal, but they were well on the way to things being almost like they’d been back then again.

Happy.

Loving.

Maybe it was time to put up a bit of a fight again.

Try.

Seize this second chance.

‘What do you think, Matty?’

His cat just yowled at him as if to say _stupid man,_ jumped onto his shoulder, and dug her claws into him, then crawled down him slightly and head-butted him over his heart.

It seemed like she was ordering (and make no mistake, he knew she was ordering, not suggesting) him to follow his heart.

As if to emphasize that, she dug her claws into him again.

Jack shook his head, gently pulling her off him and putting her down as he got up.

‘Crazy cat.’

* * *

**JACK AND PATRICIA’S GYM**

**LA**

* * *

Patty raised an eyebrow at him, as she unwrapped her hands, and he unstrapped his knee and wrist after their work-out.

He sighed.

The woman would have made a damn good spy; she could read anyone like a book, he reckoned.

She also had this knack of making you talk.

‘Bozer’s plan, his Christmas miracle, it went well.’ He smiled, small and soft and fond. ‘Really well. Diane and Riley forgave me.’

He glanced over at her, and a moment of mutual understanding, of remembrance of lost love, passed between them.

She broke the silence.

‘You got a second chance.’ She reached up and played with the chain of her necklace for a moment. ‘That’s a rare thing. Don’t waste it.’

She stood, and Jack stood too and spoke on impulse.

‘Patty, I’m going to Mac and Bozer’s for Christmas, would you like to come with? There’s always room for another friend, and no-one should be alone on Christmas Eve.’

She gave him a small smile, gratefulness in her dark and often-inscrutable eyes, but shook her head.

‘No, thank you, Jack. I’ve got someplace to be, and I’m not going to be alone.’ She picked up her boxing gloves. ‘Merry Christmas, Jack.’

He smiled at her, picking up his own gloves.

‘Merry Christmas, Patty.’

* * *

**CEMETERY**

**LA**

* * *

Patricia Thornton bent down and deposited the little bunch of forget-me-nots before her fiancé’s grave, a softness and an affection in her posture, on her face, in her eyes, that was a very, very rare sight.

‘Merry Christmas.’

Glancing around, seeing that she was alone, she sat down in front of the headstone and started talking.

‘Three years ago, I cut a deal for a girl who hacked the Pentagon because she just wanted to see if she could. Yesterday, she reconciled with my training buddy, who walked out on her and her mom ten years ago.’ She shook her head with a small smile. ‘It’s a small world…’

* * *

**SHELTER FOR SURVIVORS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE**

**LA**

* * *

Patricia smiled as she embraced the seventy-eight year old woman, with grey hair that had once been dark and the same slim elegant figure as she did, despite her age.

‘Merry Christmas, Mom.’

‘Merry Christmas, Patricia.’

The mother and daughter, one retired District Attorney, one current, released one another with a smile.

‘How are the preparations going?’

Her mother’s smile widened.

‘Very well, though we’ve still got a lot of presents to wrap, particularly since your colleagues dropped off another load this morning…’

She followed her mother into a room full of wrapping paper and ribbons and flurries of activity.

Patricia picked up a stuffed elephant and started wrapping it, as her mother picked up a toy car.

They were servants of the law, but both mother and daughter were firm believers in justice, too.

People, Patricia believed, were not born evil.

Crime had an awful lot of roots, an awful lot of causes, though people, she believed, should be held responsible for what they did.

Still, there was room for compassion, for care, and for nuance, in the law.

And she, and her mother, and most of her colleagues, believed in doing what they could to prevent crime, in the purest, most preventative way possible.

Patricia knew that helping to ensure that these children and their families had a warm meal, somewhere safe to be, and gifts and a visit from Santa for Christmas was unlikely to prevent, say, a murder or a robbery in future.

It was just one day. One occasion.

An important day, but still just one day.

Still, she firmly believed that the work her mother had taken up after retirement, volunteering and doing charity work with those born disadvantaged or down on their luck because of a myriad of causes, the work that Patricia tried to help with whenever she could, was making a difference.

Hence, of course she willingly gave up her Christmas Eve (and would give up her Christmas Day, tomorrow), despite the fact that holidays were so rare for her.

Christmas, after all, was a time for giving.

She and her mother exchanged a smile with some of the other volunteers.

She hadn’t lied to Jack, not at all.

She did have someplace to be, and she wasn’t alone.

Not in the slightest.

* * *

**MAC’S RESIDENCE**

**PASADENA**

* * *

‘You know, the first person to declare that two people should kiss under a poisonous, parasitic weed must have been _really, really_ persuasive.’

Standing on a chair, hanging up the mistletoe that Penny had brought and demanded that he suspend from the living room ceiling (Penny herself was currently in the kitchen helping Bozer), Mac looked down at his smiling girlfriend and gave a snort of laughter.

‘I think it has its roots in Norse mythology, it was a symbol of love and friendship, if I remember correctly…though, it’s an odd choice of plant, I admit.’

She just shook her head, still smiling, as he stepped back down.

‘Any excuse for a kiss, I guess.’

Mac took a step closer to her, a sly little smirk on his face.

‘Well, it’d be a shame to break tradition.’

She smiled up at him, and took a half-step closer, putting her hands on his shoulders, and he ducked his head and kissed her.

_Yeah, it’s a poisonous, parasitic weed._

_Still, I have a soft spot for mistletoe._

* * *

Bozer and Penny, who’d just walked into the living room, on their way out to the deck (it was time to put the pastrami into the grill –Jack, Diane and Riley were due to arrive in half an hour), exchanged a look and grins.

‘My little boy’s all grown up.’

Bozer actually sniffled as he said that.

Penny just nodded.

‘He’s come a really long way since Darlene Martin.’

* * *

Later that evening, Mac took Bozer’s fancy dessert (it was some sort of Christmas cake-stollen-panettone-ice-cream hybrid) out of the freezer, as Beth sliced and dished up the spiced chocolate pie she’d made and brought with her.

They were the only two in the kitchen at the moment. (Penny was in the bathroom and Jack and Diane were out on the deck, cleaning the grill, while Bozer and Riley were tidying up the wrapping paper in the living room.)

He stared at the delicious-looking monstrosity before him.

‘Beth, do you have any idea how this is supposed to be served?’

She glanced over at him and the dessert, and gave him a wry little smile.

‘Angus MacGyver, stumped? The end must be nigh!’ He just shook his head fondly, and she continued. ‘You should probably just ask Bozer.’

He nodded, and ducked out of the kitchen, heading down the hallway into the living room.

* * *

‘…Thank you, Bozer. Really, thank you.’

Bozer just smiled widely back at Riley, with soft, affectionate eyes. Loving eyes, a voice in her head whispered.

‘It was my pleasure, Riley, really was.’

She nodded and then pointed up at the ceiling.

‘Oh, look, mistletoe.’

She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

* * *

Mac turned away, ducking back down the hallway, trying to give his friends (he and Riley might have only just met, but in a way, it felt like they’d known each other for months, through Bozer’s stories –besides, she was important to Bozer, really, really important to Bozer, and that made her part of the family, in his mind) some privacy.

A minute later, Riley came into his field of view, and Mac ducked around the corner and looked into the living room. His best friend was still standing under the mistletoe, a rather stunned expression on his face. He watched as it slowly morphed into the biggest grin Mac had seen on his face in years.

He smiled at Riley, who’d paused next to him.

‘You just made his Christmas.’

Riley glanced back over at Bozer, a softness in her eyes and a sweet little smile on her face.

‘He made mine.’

* * *

Sitting next to one another on chairs at the outdoor table, the grill freshly cleaned, Diane shook her head, laughing, as Jack finished telling her the story of how he came to own a cat that might hate him.

Their eyes met, and they stared at one another for a long, long moment.

‘Diane…if I could go back in time…I’d…I’d have come right back. I know it’s not possible, but I would.’

Diane just nodded, and then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

He just looked at her, a bit surprised and very hopeful.

‘The mistletoe’s inside…’

She just smiled at him, that same hope in her eyes.

‘Maybe it’s not too late.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they all had a very merry Christmas. Hey, it’d be a bad rom-com without a sappy Christmas scene, right?
> 
> The entire thing with Patricia’s mom is inspired by a single line that she said in Wire Cutter – ‘Let’s just say, I’m my mother’s daughter.’ Bozer’s crazy dessert might not actually be delicious – I personally find most ‘Frankenfoods’ terrifying, but I really wanted it to a) be weird and b) be something that could somewhat-plausibly stump Mac.
> 
> Just an epilogue left to go now – Valentine’s Day, 2018! What a difference a year makes, right? ;)


	11. Valentine's Day 2018

**VALENTINE’S DAY 2018**

* * *

_Today is February 14 th._

_Known across most of the world as Valentine’s Day._

_In 496, this day was declared St. Valentine’s Day by Pope Gelasius I, though its original roots are in Lupercalia, an ancient Roman fertility festival. Interestingly, Lupercalia was celebrated on February **15 th**, not the 14th. _

_Now, of course, things have changed a lot since both Ancient Rome and 496._

_Now, Valentine’s Day is a day that some say is marked by commercialism and overpriced roses and overdone marketing campaigns._

_I know I’m probably an idealistic romantic – can you blame me, though, given how my life and the lives of my friends have played out? - but I firmly believe that underneath all of that, there’s a heart to be found._

_I firmly believe that the spirit of the day, the romance and the love, is not dead._

_In fact, I think it’s alive and well._

* * *

**RILEY’S RESIDENCE**

**LA**

* * *

Riley smiled as she opened the door and walked into her apartment after a long day of work, and was greeted by an amazing smell and her grinning boyfriend, wearing an absurd apron decorated with pink hearts and emblazoned with the words _Kiss the Cook._

(She followed the instructions.)

‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Riley!’

‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Bozer.’

He just grinned even wider, and made a ridiculous little bow.

‘Now, if you’ll just follow me, my lady, your dinner awaits!’

She shook her head at him, but there was a grin on her face.

Valentine’s Day was commercialized and overblown and she was definitely not its biggest fan.

But this?

A homemade dinner, cooked by her cute, sweet, loyal, loving boyfriend? And, if the DVDs on her coffee table were any indication, a superhero movie marathon afterwards?

This was a _perfect_ Valentine’s Day.

* * *

**DIANE’S RESIDENCE**

**LA**

* * *

Jack, in his best black shirt and holding a bunch of daffodils, knocked on Diane’s door.

She opened the door a moment later, with a smile that widened when he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and handed her the bunch of flowers.

‘You remembered.’ Daffodils had always been her favourite. She opened the door a little wider, letting him in, and walked into the kitchen and put the flowers in a vase. ‘Thank you, Jack, they’re beautiful.’

He smirked, but his eyes were soft and gentle when he replied.

‘Just like you.’

She shook her head at him, a fond smile on her face as she did.

‘You’re ridiculous, Jack Dalton.’

* * *

Diane turned to him, an eyebrow quirked, that little smile still firmly affixed to her face, as he led her out to his car.

‘Your Shelby Cobra?’

Jack just nodded with a grin.

‘Gotta take my best girl out for a drive in my best car, right?’

Diane’s smile just widened.

* * *

**PARK**

**PASADENA**

* * *

As they lay on a blanket stargazing as best as they could, given the light pollution, with her head pillowed on his chest, body perpendicular to his, Beth turned to Mac, a grin on her face.

‘You can navigate by the stars. You always carry a Swiss Army knife. You haven’t met a problem you couldn’t solve using it, some paperclips, a stick of gum and a bit of duct tape. Sure, you’re no stickler for rules, but _how in the world_ did you get kicked out of the Boy Scouts?’

He laughed, shaking his head.

‘It’s quite the story.’ He smiled at the look on her face. ‘It all started the day I decided to go for this particular merit badge…’

* * *

‘… _that_ is how you got kicked out of the Boy Scouts. _Really_?’

Mac, lying down with his arms crossed under his head, nodded, looking up at his girlfriend, who’d sat up partway through his story and was now looking down at him, face incredulous.

‘Yes, really. I got more than kicked out, actually; I am officially banned from attending any and all Boy Scout activities in any capacity.’

The doctor just stared at him for a few beats, and then covered her mouth with her hands, shoulders shaking with uncontrollable laughter. Mac, too, chuckled, more in response to her reaction than anything else, shaking his head.

Once she’d finally stopped laughing, she leaned over him and poked him in the sternum, still grinning and flushed from laughter, with an affectionate look in her eyes.

‘You, Angus MacGyver, are _ridiculous_! I really _cannot wait_ for the day that Bozer makes a tell-all memoir-movie about the two of you…’

Mac looked up at his girlfriend, grinning and laughing with pink cheeks and teasing him with love in her eyes, and smiled, sitting up and giving into the impulse to kiss her.

_There’s some kind of saying about good fences making good neighbours._

_I could probably make some sort of witty comment about a destroyed fence and my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend who is also my neighbour, but honestly, my brain’s not functioning to full capacity right now._

* * *

_I have a wonderful girlfriend, and I know it’s early stages yet, but I also think that I’ll have a wife and kids someday too._

_I think I’m going to get that white-picket-fence happy ending._

_I think that Jack and Bozer are going to as well._

_I think that, maybe, hopefully, we all found the right one, this last year._

_Or, in Jack’s case, found the right one again._

_And I’ve also got great friends._

_Family, really._

_I’ve got more than enough love in my life._

_Remember what I said last year?_

_There’s always next year?_

_Well, now that it is ‘next year’, I can say that it’s been a very good Valentine’s Day._

_I wonder what next year will bring?_

_Personally, I think it’s going to be even better._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s the end of that! Thank you all kindly for your support, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this year-in-the-life rom-com!
> 
> Similar-ish stories of mine, if you’re interested, given that this is pretty different from the more typical (and absolutely excellent whump and hurt-comfort that is to this fandom as paperclips are to Mac) would probably be the Valentine’s Day Special of _Paperclip Charms_ , and a Time for Family and Trigonometry in _Two Paperclips and a Stick of Gum_ and _The Roommate Chronicles._

**Author's Note:**

> -
> 
> AN: So, what do you think?
> 
> Penny being Mac and Bozer’s mutual ex-girlfriend is very, very loosely inspired by the Gibbs/Diane/Fornell situation in _NCIS._ Apparently, such situations do exist in real life- I once met a guy who had a mutual ex-girlfriend with his best friend. The girl was actually their other best friend.
> 
> And yes, I made Matty Jack’s cat. Honestly, I find that so amusing that I’m only about as sorry as Mac was for putting that gum wrapper in just the right position to take out the Phoenix’s security system!


End file.
